Category Archives: In Our Time

How I flunked my IQ test

You know those quizzes people are always taking on Facebook — like “which ‘Friends’ character are you,” or “what’s your real nationality?” Well, I took one of those one day recently, and as I was taking it, a dialogue box popped up saying that some of my friends — one of them closely related to me — had “challenged” me to take an IQ test.

Well, this hit me in one of my weak spots, naturally. As y’all know, one of my few skills is that I’m good at tests. Whether it’s the SAT or a current events quiz or whatever, I tend to score way over what you would think by looking, say, at my high school transcript. I play way over my head. Some people have a natural ear for music; I test well. Just one of those things.

Add to that the fact that I was recently laid off, which makes me additionally vulnerable — all that much more eager to show off, if only to myself. You know, the “I’ve still got it” phenomenon.

So I bit. I went to take the test. And boy, did I do well. The questions were so easy as to arouse one’s suspicions under most circumstances. Sort of on the “answer this correctly and you win a free dance lesson” level. One was how many states are in the U.S., and only one of the multiple-choice answers was anywhere near 50. The hardest question was picking the 16th president — even if I hadn’t known it was Lincoln, he was the only option offered within a century of the right time. I think the closest ones before and after were Thomas Jefferson and Bill Clinton.

But instead of thinking, “Hey, wait a minute — what kind of scam test is this?” I’m going, “Man, I’m really acing this? What kind of IQ do you get with a perfect score?!?”

Then, when it was done, I get a page that tells me I just need to do one thing before my IQ score will post on Facebook — type in my cell phone number, and choose my service provider.

Which I did.

First of all, my extremely high IQ score never showed up on Facebook.

Second, I started getting these text messages. Really stupid, irritating text messages, saying stuff like “Which male celebrity from ‘The Hills’ is dating Paris Hilton?” I am not making this up.

I would have protested, except that, you know, I didn’t want to tell anybody how I had let myself in for this. Because as dumb as it was to fall for this, I was smart enough to see what had happened.

Anyway, earlier this week the Verizon bill came. And I had been charged $29.97 for 3 “Premium text” messages. Yes, ten bucks apiece.

So I got on the horn to Verizon and got them to block all such messages subsequently, which they agreed to do. Of course, by this time one or two more had come in, which will be on my next bill, no doubt. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Because, you know, I had signed up for them.

When I got off the phone, I reported to my wife that I had taken care of the problem, going forward. She asked, how in the world I came to get such messages? I said, “How about if we just leave it at, I’ve taken care of the problem, and not delve into that?” But I went on to explain, and she agreed with me that yes, I had certainly flunked the IQ test.

Oh, but the tale doesn’t end there.

Today, I was in the Harbison area shopping for Father’s Day for me Da. And suddenly, I got another one of those messages, from the same source, which the words “Premium Messaging” appearing in the headline field.

I immediately went over to the Verizon place, fuming, and got in the queue for service. The lady at the door urged me to call instead because I was in for a long wait, but I said no, obviously one couldn’t get this taken care of on the phone. I was all indignant.

Fortunately, the wait wasn’t long at all. When it was my turn, I went through my indignant spiel again, and the service rep took my phone, and clicked on the message. It said, “Premium Messaging to this mobile number has been blocked…”

Oh.

So I looked really stupid again. I thanked the guy, and thanked the lady at the front door, and left sheepishly.

But you know what? Deep down, I have this gut fear that it’s going to show up on my bill again anyway.

Of course, this kind of scam should be illegal. Anyone who practices it should be drawn and quartered.

But who’s going to report them? The victims know how stupid they’ve been…

100 followers, and counting…

Just reached the 100-follower mark on Twitter. So that makes me like a centurion, right? Like the one in Matthew 8:9:

For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

OK, I’ve already figured out that no one is going to do what I say just because they’re my “followers.” But as silly and insubstantial as it all is, I’ve acquired a miser’s acquisitiveness on this point. How many MORE followers can I get? I picture myself like Spartacus (just to continue with the ancient Rome thing), roaming the countryside while hundreds, thousands flock to my banner… (Warning — it ended badly for Spartacus and his followers.)

And even though there are no rules, or even conventions I can think of, I have it in my mind that, if only I can have more followers than I myself am following, I’m … I don’t know… an influential person. Or at least, ahead of the game. Whatever the game is. It’s the only way I know to keep score, anyway. And currently my score is 100 to 75.

Today’s news that matters

Lately I’ve been missing my Wall Street Journal (the subscription that the paper paid for ran out, and they wanted $299 to renew), particularly the “What’s News” feature on the front page, which provided a nice briefing each day of the news that mattered. If all I had time to do was read that, I at least was aware of everything important that had happened nationally and internationally.

It took me a while to get used to that. For years, I had thought in standard newspaper-front-page language to get my cues on what was big. There is nothing, of course, standard about the WSJ; they do things their own way. The New York Times is typical of the traditional, conventional approach, which as a newspaperman (who was once a front-page editor, many years ago) I appreciate. It’s probably meaningful to you as well, only subconsciously rather than overtly.

It works like this, in part: The most important thing that happens in the world appears in a vertical element on the far right-hand side of the page, usually, but not always, touching the top of the page. In a newspaper with a truly conservative approach such as the NYT (I’m using “conservative” in the true meaning of the word, not in the popular political sense, folks), most days that lede story (that’s the newspaper spelling for “lead,” by the way) will only have a one-column headline. That’s because most days, there is no earth-shattering news. History moves gradually, for the most part.

When the lede hed (newspaperese for headline) gets bigger than two columns, watch out. It could be good news, but it could be really bad. In any case, it’s really something.

A lede-worthy story is several things:

  1. It’s important.
  2. It’s probably interesting, but it doesn’t have to be. Quite often, the most important developments are dull, and your attention naturally drifts to other things on the page. Those highly interesting other things may be more prominently displayed on the page — toward the center top, or left-hand side — and they may have art with them (newspaperese for photos, graphics or anything that’s not plain text).
  3. It happened. It doesn’t advance something that’s going to happen (although there could be rare exceptions, such as a story that builds up to something like a presidential inauguration — but even then, something has to have happened leading toward that). It’s not a trend story — it doesn’t take a step back from the news; it is the news. It’s not analysis.

This may seem all terribly pedantic, especially as it has to do with a dying industry. It may seem like I’m providing a connossieur’s view of horses and buggies. But a lot of you out there are confirmed newspaper readers, and you probably understand these things I’m explaining instinctively. I’m talking here about you true aficionados; the people who not only take The State 7 days, but the NYT or WSJ as well. You are the people who are the most avid editorial page readers, because you are the most committed readers of the paper overall.)

Editors informed by that tradition certainly assumed you did. Buzz Merritt did. Buzz was the executive editor at The Wichita Eagle-Beacon (now known once again merely as The Wichita Eagle) when I was its front-page editor in the mid-80s. Buzz had come up in the business at The Charlotte Observer, which was always of the traditionalist school (I don’t know if it is now or not, because I never see it). He’s the one who drilled those three qualities of a lede, and the permissible ways to present it on the page, into my head.

And Buzz explained that a lede should communicate one thing very clearly to the reader, even the casual reader, whether consciously or not: Is my world safe? Usually, the answer will be yes, at least relatively so, and your eyes will merely brush over that reassuring fact as you move on to dig into news that interests you more. For that reason the lede should often be unobtrusive, occupying the minimal space on that right-hand edge. But when you really need to sit up and take notice (the collapse of credit markets, the USSR moving missiles into Cuba) it needs to be big enough to reach out and grab you.

Most of these subtleties, of course, are lost on you if you read your newspaper online. As useful as the Web versions can be (and the NYT and WSJ are very good at adding value via the Web) that medium just hasn’t developed the same visual and organizational language to convey the same messages about what’s important today. And that’s one reason why, consciously or unconsciously, many of you still cling to your print editions.

Anyway, as an Old School newspaperman, with a traditionalist’s sense of what matters — and one who thinks some of you might be of a similar orientation — let me offer a briefing glimpse at the news that actually mattered this morning. No Britney Spears. No “Idol.” No sports (except, of course, during the World Series or the Final Four, and then just as leavening in what we call “the mix”). Just news that matters.

Here goes:

National/International

U.S. to Regulate Tobacco — A good lede candidate. It happened. It’s historically important, with extremely wide-ranging implications across the country. And it’s also interesting. (From an SC perspective, it’s another step forward on the national front while we can’t even raise our lowest-in-the-nation tax.)

Iran Votes Today — This couldn’t be the lede, because it hadn’t happened yet. But there’s nothing bigger on the horizon today, and demands prominent front-page play. Barring something huge and unexpected overshadowing it, a likely lede candidate for tomorrow (if we know anything about results).

Al Qaeda shifting Out of Pakistan — Not a lede either, but a very important trend story. Seems to have been exclusive to the NYT, although I could be wrong. (Of course, if you’re a paper that subscribes to the NYT news service, you would have had access to this in-cycle.)

TV Finally Goes Digital — This story, after the years of build-up, is pretty ho-hum. But it is happening today. And even though most folks won’t notice the difference, this is a significant milestone that affects, even if unobtrusively in most cases, technology that all of us have in our homes, and that too many of us spend too much time staring at. A small, take-note-of headline on the page.

State/Local

BEA Issues Gloomier Forecast — A good lede candidate for a South Carolina paper (and indeed, that’s how it was played in The State). You might want to run, as a sidebar, this more upbeat indicator: Lowcountry Home Sales Up. There are promising signs, and you need to keep readers apprised of them, while not sugarcoating the situation.

USC Tuition Holds to Inflation — Important consumer news, to be sure. But this also contains currents of several things of strategic importance to the state, addressing as it does economic development, the federal stimulus, the state budget cuts, and accessibility to a college education in a state in which too few adults have one.

I’ll stop there, because that’s enough for a respectable front page with most newspapers.

Anyway, if y’all like this, maybe I’ll do it more often. Like daily.

My former employer is having me followed

Not sure what to make of this.

One of the pleasures — for a megalomaniac — of Twitter is that instead of having “friends” (and I’ve never quite gotten the meaning of the word as Facebook uses it), you have “followers.” My number of followers has been steadily, but gradually, growing since I signed up over the weekend. Each one makes me feel slightly more powerful and influential, just because of the word.

But what am I to make of my 26th follower?

The State Newspaper (thestate) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Not Warren or Cindi or even Mark Lett, or Gary Ward with thestate.com. No, the institution itself. Its icon is an extreme closeup of the paper’s nameplate.

Of course, you know that I’ve always loved Big Brother. Even ex-Big Brother.

I guess I should deal with this by following it right back, huh?

A sort of lame version of haiku

While my main motive in getting a Twitter account was to promote the blog, I confess to be slightly seduced by the thing itself, as it is slightly fun to try to express something in that straitened form.

Sort of like a cheesy, less-demanding form of haiku.

Here’s what I’ve posted today while I was not blogging:

Cap City closed. Lizard’s Thicket instead. Monday paper $.75. (Paper free at Club). Poor me.

Oppressive Iran regime shuts down Facebook. Oppressive regimes not all bad.

Happy Yankee Memorial Day, y’all! (Six days early, that is…)

Walking across the Horseshoe, thinking, “Could this weather be more perfect?” Even in coat and tie…

Starbucks again. Have to. I do a meeting or two in the a.m. these days, and I’m wiped. PTSD or something.

Yep, it’s insipid, but you can see me trying to post an actual thought there on the Iran thing. Hey, I didn’t say it was profound; but it was a thought.

And I’m actually kind of worried about the Starbucks thing. I posted from there yesterday as well:

I’m at Starbucks now. Got a refill and I’m watching the rain. Is this tedious enough for y’all yet?

Actually, waiting for this cup to cool a bit, feeling the 1st one, watching the rain is sort of beautiful.

I can sort of see why the heathen spend their Sundays this way. An alternative way to keep it holy, perhaps…

(…or is that rank heresy, may God forgive me yet again?) Must go now…

Is it cheating to do multiple tweets in a row like that? Am I failing to preserve the unities? Do I care?

I don’t know why I get so tired by mid-afternoon every day. When I w0rked at the paper, I’d go for 12 hours without feeling a thing. I think it’s more tiring just to do different stuff every day, and to have one’s future so uncertain. Probably good for me in the long run, though. I hope. Don’t new challenges help us stave off Alzheimer’s?

I surrender to Twitter

OK, I did it. I signed up for Twitter. After months of dismissing and abusing the very notion of it, I gave in yesterday and signed up.

The last straw was that Tim Kelly told me last week that you could arrange it so that when you post on your blog, the headline goes out on Twitter. Haven’t figured out how to do that yet, but seems like it would be pretty cool. He said there’s also something clever I could do with Facebook vis-a-vis the blog.

I need to either get serious about this blog — fix up the appearance, promote it more, and most of all post more often — or give it up. As I’ve mentioned before, I actually find it harder to blog without full-time, permanent employment. As busy as I was at the paper, I was sitting at a computer (actually, two computers, or even three if you count the Blackberry) for about 12 hours a day, and I could post any time things slowed down a bit — when I was waiting for copy, or for somebody to call me back, or for proofs, or whatever. I had to go through tons of e-mail each day, and frequently things that came over the transom that way made for quick-and-easy blog fodder.

Now, as I run hither and yon trying to earn a living, I might have ideas for blog posts, but I don’t have time to sit and write them. I need to either figure a way to do that, or the blog’s gonna die on me.

Thanks to those of you who have stuck with me thus far. And suggestions, as always, are welcome.

Bring ‘stirrups’ back to baseball

OK, that last post was so heavy and depressing, I feel the need to lighten the mood by mentioning another story from the WSJ’s front page, this one about “stirrups” in baseball.

You know, the leggings — the socks you wore over your socks, the colorful ones with the heel and toe cut out.

This piece was about how the major leagues have abandoned the stirrups, mainly because the players don’t want to wear them — you may have noticed that in MLB, they wear their pants right down to their shoes, which means they don’t look like ballplayers any more — and the players are such big shots and make so much money that nobody can tell them what to do. But in the minors, discipline still reins, so the players still wear them.

Some points of interest from the story:

  • It leads and ends with a game in Myrtle Beach. You know, Myrtle Beach has a minor league team and Columbia doesn’t, in case you haven’t noticed.
  • The sole remaining source is a funky, homey little factory just up the road in North Carolina.
  • The fashion started because, starting in about 1905, there was an urban legend in baseball that held that some players had suffered blood poisoning from the dye in their socks getting into abrasions on their feet. This led players to wear white socks under their colored team socks, and that was bulky, so somebody came up with the idea of cutting the heel and toe out of the oversock. (The infections did NOT come from the dye, by the way, but from plain old germs, it was later determined.)

A story such as this appeals to my own particular sort of instinctive conservatism. I believe players should not only be made to wear stirrups but should WANT to in the same way that “woods” in golf should be made of persimmon. It was good enough for our daddies and granddaddies. Of course, as I type this, I’m looking at a picture of my own grandad, “Whitey” Warthen, pitching a game in the 19-teens. He’s wearing full colored socks, not stirrups, because in his day men were men. Me, I’d settle for stirrups. Because I’m still not sure about that blood-poisoning thing. You can’t be too careful.

I love the way the WSJ story ends:

On the field, as the Pelicans and Blue Rocks lined up for the anthem, half-moons glowed along the baselines. Kicking high, Michael Broadway pitched two perfect innings. In the fifth, Cody Johnson stepped into a fastball and sent it over the right-field fence.

It fell apart for the Pelicans in the ninth: walks, hits, errors. They lost, 9-2. “I want my $7 back,” a fan yelled on his way out. But for the stirrup-conscious in the crowd, the final score didn’t matter. On this spring night in Myrtle Beach, the socks won.

I’ll take the public sector queue, please

When I told my little tale of minor annoyance about having to get a new Social Security card a couple of weeks back (35 years I went without one, and the first time anyone asks me for it is when I find myself unemployed), some of my libertarian friends out there predictably pointed to it as a sign of the inefficiency and unaccountability of gummint. Which I expected, having handed you such a beautiful opportunity. (Don’t say I never gave you anything.)

But here’s the thing about that — it really didn’t take very long, and aside from the hassles from security guards, it all went pretty smoothly. My new SS card arrived in the mail sooner than expected. I gave it to Mamanem to put in a safe place.

Contrast that to my experience at my wireless phone provider, where I went to get my Blackberry wiped clean of stuff from the corporate server (how’s that for a band name: Corporate Server), and set up my new e-mail and such. An hour and a half. The young man who helped me couldn’t have been nicer (which is why I removed the actual name of my wireless provider, because I don’t want to get him in any trouble with his boss), and admittedly the transaction was somewhat complex. But what gets me is the wait before someone starts helping you. When I asked about whether there was a time I could come back and not find such a crowd, I was told there wasn’t. One employee mentioned that his wife calls the place “the DMV of wireless.” Which is a good joke, except for the fact that the DMV has figured out how to provide its services without making people wait forever. Maybe the cell phone companies should ask the DMV how they did it.

Brave new world of political discourse

37 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
ONCE, NOT so long ago, serious people decried the reduction and trivialization of political ideas to the level of a bumper sticker. Some days, I long for the coherence, the relevance, the completeness of bumper stickers.
    Let’s knit together a few of the unraveled threads that have frayed my mind in the past week, shall we?
    Thread One: A Colorado congressman who takes pride in his technological savvy claimed partial “credit” for the demise of a newspaper, saying, “Who killed the Rocky Mountain News? We’re all part of it, for better or worse, and I argue it’s mostly for the better…. The media is dead and long live the new media.”
    Thread Two: Last week, I started working out again. I can’t read when I’m on the elliptical trainer because I bounce up and down too much, so I turn on the television. This gives me an extended exposure to 24/7 TV “news” and its peculiar obsessions, which I normally avoid like a pox. I hear far more than I want to about Rush Limbaugh, who wants the country’s leadership to fail, just to prove an ideological point. The president’s chief of staff dubs this contemptible entertainer the leader of the president’s opposition. Even more absurdly, the actual chief of the opposition party spends breath denying it — and then apologizes for doing so. See why I avoid this stuff?
    Thread Three: Two of the most partisan Democrats in the S.C. Senate, John Land and Brad Hutto, introduce a mock resolution to apologize to Rush on behalf of South Carolina so that our state doesn’t “miss out on the fad that is sweeping the nation — to openly grovel before the out-spoken radio host.” The Republican majority spends little time dismissing the gag, but any time thus spent by anyone was time not spent figuring out how to keep essential state services going in this fiscal crisis.
    Thread Four: At midday Thursday I post on my blog a few thoughts about the just-announced candidacy of U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett for governor, and invite readers to share what they think of the Upstate Republican. As of mid-afternoon Friday, there were nine comments on the subject, and three of them were from me. By the same time, there were 66 comments about the Rush Limbaugh flap.
    Thread Five: A colleague brings to my attention a new Web site called SCTweets, where you can read spontaneous “Twitter” messages from such S.C. politicians as Anton Gunn, David Thomas, Bob Inglis, Nathan Ballentine and Thad Viers, with a number of S.C. bloggers thrown in. It’s the brainchild of S.C. Rep. Dan Hamilton and self-described GOP “political operative” Wesley Donehue (which would explain why Rep. Gunn is the only Democrat on the list I just cited). They see it as “a creative way to showcase SC’s tech-savvy elected officials.” It sounds like a neat idea, but when you go there and look at it… well, here’s a sample:

bobinglis Want a window into our campaign themes? Check out my recent letter at http://wurl.ws/9coX Join us if you can!

annephutto had a great lunch

AntonJGunn Having lunch with the Mayor of Elgin.

mattheusmei Prepare to have your mind blownaway http://tinyurl.com/b6w8w9 #sctweets, simply amazing!!!

RobGodfrey Beautiful day in Columbia. #sctweets

thadviers just had lunch with little Joe at Jimmy Johns.

    Perhaps this will be useful to someone, and I applaud Messrs. Hamilton and Donehue for the effort. But so far I haven’t figured out what Twitter adds to modern life that we didn’t already have with e-mail and blogs and text-messaging and, well, the 24/7 TV “news.” Remember how I complained in a recent column about how disorienting and unhelpful I find Facebook to be? Well, this was worse. I felt like I was trying to get nutrition from a bowl of Lucky Charms mixed with Cracker Jack topped with Pop Rocks, stirred with a Slim Jim.
    Thread Six: Being reminded of Facebook, I checked my home page, and found that a friend I worked with a quarter-century ago was exhorting me to:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.

    I followed his instructions. The book nearest to my laptop was the literally dog-eared (chewed by a dog that died three decades ago) paperback Byline: Ernest Hemingway. Here’s the fifth sentence on page 56:
“He smiled like a school girl, shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands to his face in a mock gesture of shame.”
    Not much without context, but you know what? I got more out of that than I got out of that Twitter page. At least I formed a clear, coherent picture of something.
    I just remembered that I said I would knit these threads together. OK, here goes:
    It occurs to me that Twitter and Facebook are the bright new world that the Colorado congressman who claims credit for killing The Rocky Mountain News extolled. In this world, political discourse consists of partisans prattling about talk show hosts and elected officials casting spontaneous sentence fragments into the dusty, arid public square.
    I was going to write a column for today about Congressman Barrett’s candidacy for governor. As I mentioned a couple of weeks back when I wrote about Sen. Vincent Sheheen entering the race, I’m trying to get an early start on writing as much as possible about that critical decision coming up in 2010, in the hope that if we think about it and talk about it enough, we the people can make a better decision than we have the past few elections.
    But I got distracted.
    I’ll get with Rep. Barrett soon; I promise. And I’ll try to write about it in complete sentences, for those of you who have not yet adjusted.

For links and more, please go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

This is worse than Facebook

17 Replies

You know how I've complained about how I just don't get Facebook — that I find it disorienting, and just generally a lousy way to communicate information?

Well, I've found a worse way — Twitter.

Have you seen this new site that S.C. Rep. Dan Hamilton and self-described GOP "political operative" Wesley Donehue have started, SCTweets? Basically, its point is:

…to find a creative way to showcase SC’s tech-savvy elected officials.
Specifically, we expect the Statehouse crew to be twittering a lot from
the floor and we thought it would be cool to see what they were saying.
That goal somehow expanded and we decided to showcase all South
Carolina politicos with our directory. We then gave them a way to
interact through #sctweets.

Look, I don't mean to criticize Messrs. Hamilton and Donehue at all. I appreciate the effort. Go for it. But when I try to obtain any sort of information of value from a series of incomplete, typo-ridden sentence fragments from a bunch of people ranging from Anton Gunn to David Thomas to Bob Inglis to Nathan Ballentine to Thad Viers, with a lot of Blogosphere usual suspects such as Mattheus Mei thrown in, I feel like I've trying to get nutrition from a bowl of Lucky Charms mixed with Cracker Jack with cotton candy and Pop Rocks on top, stirred with a Slim Jim. Just a jumble of junk.

The "authors" aren't to blame. It's the medium. I'm still waiting to find any value in this Twitter thing. I suspect I'll be waiting a long time.

What do I consider to be GOOD way to communicate information? Well, here's a coincidence: I actually looked at my Facebook page this morning, and as usual got little out of it. But I noticed where a friend I worked with a quarter-century ago posted something that seemed a deliberate illustration of the incoherence of Facebook. He exhorted readers to:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.

So I followed his instructions (except for the posting part). The book nearest to my laptop was the literally dog-eared (chewed by a dog that died three decades ago) paperback Byline: Ernest Hemingway. Here's the fifth sentence on page 56 (if you count the incomplete, continued sentence at the top of the page as the first):

"He smiled like a school girl, shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands to his face in a mock gesture of shame."

And you know what? I got more out of that than I got out of that Twitter page. At least I formed a clear, coherent picture of something.

It occurs to me that Twitter is the bright new world that that Colorado congressman who claims credit for killing The Rocky Mountain News extols. And then it occurs to me that to the extent he is right, to the extent that this is the future of political communication, we are in a lot of trouble int his country…

‘life and prosperity, death and doom…’

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Perhaps I should begin this post with the opening words of today's first reading in the Catholic lectionary:

Moses said to the people:
"Today I have set before you
life and prosperity, death and doom…"
        — Deuteronomy 30:15

Since this last post on the subject ("TNR on the 'end' of newspapers") — when I mentioned the bankruptcies of the Philadelphia papers and alluded to that of the Journal Register Co. — the flood of bad news in my industry has continued unabated this week. For instance:

That's just a sampling.

But that's not the big story, is it? The big story is that what's killing the newspapers is the dying economy — no economic activity, no advertising, no newspapers.

As President Obama gamely tried to buck up the country Tuesday night, the picture looked grimmer and grimmer for the whole economy. Of all that I've read this week about bailouts, layoffs, losses, cutbacks and so forth this week, nothing made as big an impression on me as a piece in the WSJ yesterday about several new economic indicators.

The story began with Ben Bernanke telling us that we could start to snap out of this by 2010 — if EVERYTHING goes right from here on. It continued:

The confidence of U.S. consumers tumbled in February to its lowest level in more than 41 years, partly because people are increasingly discouraged about job prospects. Two fresh measurements suggest home-price declines are accelerating. New Fed data showed rising bank-loan delinquencies. And companies from software giant Microsoft Corp. to retailers Office Depot Inc. and Macy's Inc. reported a worsening profit outlook.

That worst-in-41-years was actually the worst ever, since consumers' pulses were first taken this way in 1967. Additionally:

The jobless rate has already risen to 7.6%, and fresh data indicate that Americans are pessimistic that the outlook will improve any time soon. The Conference Board's consumer-confidence index fell to 25 in February, its lowest level since monthly data were first collected in 1967, and 48% of people surveyed said jobs were hard to get, the largest percentage since February 1992. Some 47% said they expected jobs to decrease in the months ahead, the highest percentage since December 1973.

Almost a quarter of respondents said they expected their incomes to decrease over the next six months, an all-time high.

If only a quarter expect their incomes to decrease, it makes me think three-quarters of us are fooling ourselves.

Oh, by the way, speaking of Ben Bernanke — did you see that his boyhood home in Dillon — yes, Dillon, S.C. — was foreclosed upon? It was no longer owned by the Bernanke's, but still, as omens go… The WSJ followed up that story with a slideshow of Dillon (including pics from South of the Border).

Let me add to all this my firm belief that we can't possibly turn this around until we start feeling a little more upbeat about our prospects. So enough of the gloom and doom for today; I just needed to get that out of my system.

Anybody have any happy news to share?

For me, I'll return to today's readings, where the responsorial psalm promises this to one who hopes in the Lord:

He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.

Amen to that.

ANOTHER social networking site? ARRGGGHHH!

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Just got this press release:

Hi Brad,

I hope you are doing well. I wanted to let you know about a unique social news service that just launched – BUUUZ.com.

Have you ever wanted access to a community of people who have the same interests as you? Where you can share artistic visions, muses and styles? Many people find social websites like Facebook and MySpace invasive and difficult to navigate. At BUUUZ registration is simple and members create virtual "islands" based on subjects of interest (islands are populated with news from websites across the internet as well as BUUUZ community discussion). Creating an "island" for a topic is as easy as picking a few keywords that best describe your interests.

As an example, if you love to oil paint like I do, you can use favorite artists, museums, etc. as island keywords to be alerted on stories and member conversations mentioning them. Then you instantly become a part of a worldwide conversation through this new service, where you can find and interact with new friends who have the same interests.

In light of the Facebook Terms of Service uproar from last week I wanted to mention:

– BUUUZ's subscription revenue model, makes it so they do not have to "fight" with the users about owning their data.
– At BUUUZ, when a user deletes their account, and their data is completely deleted
– BUUUZ has also set up automatic deletion of old messages

Please feel free to take a look at the service at BUUUZ.com and reach out if you would like images or have questions.

Best Regards,
Brent

Brent Bucci
FortyThree PR

… to which I can only say, "ARRGGHHH!" Or, perhaps, "AIIIEEEE!!!" Or somewhat more sedately, "Please; not another freaking social networking site."

Since I did that column over the holidays about Facebook, I have had even MORE "friend requests," and some of them have been from being I actually felt obliged to say "yes" to, so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. (And yes, some of them were people I'd actually like to maintain connections with, but not all…) And some of them were … a tad… weird. Like, if I thought myself a target for such things, I'd think "stalker." Which is not a good feeling.

Who's got time for all this socializing? Hey, you've got time on your hands, go read a newspaper. And then, go to the mall and buy something, and tell the merchant to buy some ads. Make yourself useful.

If you love books, dig my tie

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Recently some of you had disparaging things to say about traditional men's neckwear. Well, this should
turn you around — at least, it should win over those of you who have enjoyed our discussion of good books back on this post.

Both p.m. and I put pretty much anything Mark Twain wrote on our favorites list, and I doubt that we're alone.

Anyway, I acquired this cravat a couple of years ago — it was a Father's Day present that I sort of picked out myself. I had seen it in the gift shop of a museum/performance hall in Harrisburg, Pa. I don't know where you would find it closer than that. The label says "Museum Artifacts," which led me to find one on this Web site. Just don't wear it to any event I'm likely to attend, 'cause I found it first!

There's a tantalizing detail on this tie: One of the book covers at the bottom is of a book called Innocents at Home, which I had never seen or heard of, much less read. And I find few references to in on the Web, although Amazon does seem to have a line on A copy.

Something to add to my "to read" list, for sure — if I can get my hands on one. I loved Innocents Abroad.

We’re lining up for soup

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Soupline

Maybe it’s not the 1930s yet. I haven’t seen more people than usual lining up for free soup.

But apparently, a lot more of us are buying soup, the cheaper the better:

According to a November survey of Wal Mart stores focusing on canned foods by
Longbow Research analyst Alton Stump, the canned soup category is gaining
momentum, and within the category, Cambell’s Soup (CPB) is
gaining share against rival Progresso, made by General Mills (GIS)
as consumers look for less expensive meal
alternatives.

According to the survey, volumes in the soup
category expanded at a rate of 10% annually in November, up from the 7%
to 8% gains registered so far during most of 2008.  “The category volume boost
of late resulted in part from an apparent shift in consumer demand towards
takehome food items, which benefited soup in particular as a less-expensive meal
alternative,”  Mr. Stump said.

That’s from a relief from an outfit known as Longbow Research.

You, too, can use irony — no experience required

39 Replies

Obama_ad_wart

Wow. As cool as Barack Obama is — and he IS cool, all the time — some of his supporters are VERY emotional.

Two of them — Jennifer and Pam — got so worked up by my very mild use of irony on this previous post (referring to their guy as "The One") that they mistook me for a Republican. To wit:

I don’t understand why Republicans continue to call Senator Obama
"The One" – none of his supporters has ever used that term. Why do you
rely on mocking the man and spreading lies about him? Is it maybe
because you are obviously wrong on the issues? Crawl back into your
caves, please, and let us get to work cleaning up another one of your
messes.

Posted by: Jennifer Mullen | Oct 29, 2008 9:13:15 PM

_____________________________________

When a party has no good ideas or solutions you slander your
opponent. Just like Brad , you know " the one " comment. The consistent
theme from the RNC and the McCain campaign is fear and hate . And ,
this paper’s editorial board enforces that theme. Sad to think that
some in this state are unable to look to the future .

Posted by: pam,greenwood | Oct 30, 2008 9:58:27 AM

Talk about letting emotion override the higher faculties…

p.m., thanks for pointing out the painfully obvious:

Jennifer, Oprah Winfrey introduced Obama as "The One" years ago. I
have seen the videotape. If you would Google it, you could probably
find it….

Posted by: p.m. | Oct 29, 2008 10:43:00 PM

Yes, I got the thing about "The One" from that font of Republican bile, Oprah… We "Republicans" always go to her for our marching orders, talking points, swastika armbands, etc.

Folks, where are we when we can’t even use the smallest bits of irony in our public discourse without somebody getting all offended?

Come on, folks — Phillip gets it. He’s for Obama, and he can josh about the cheesiness:

Naturally, my biggest complaint was the syrupy Saving-Private-Ryan-ish background music.

Posted by: Phillip | Oct 30, 2008 4:40:54 AM

And I didn’t even notice the music — leave it to Phillip; he’s our music guy. I just noticed the cheesy set, which someone was careful to make ALMOST exactly like the Oval Office, but enough unlike it to allow for plausible deniability. I mean, LOOK at it, people. Now that’s artistry.

Folks, cheesy is cheesy. Joe the Plumber — cheesy. Pandering with a gas tax cut — cheesy. Picking Sarah Palin — cheesy (although, to quote from the movie Phillip cites, I find myself "strangely attracted…"). Maverick this, maverick that — cheesy.

Now, you Obama supporters — make some ironic comments about your guy. Come on, you can do it. Look, this guy’s going to be the president, and I just won’t be able to stand four years of y’all being so deadly earnest. Loosen up.

Who (if anyone) is John Vierdsen, and why does he want to be my ‘friend’?

14 Replies

Call me a mossback, but I admit it: I don’t get Facebook. It’s not that I ain’t hep! Blogging is second nature to me. Almost everything else about the Internet, from Google to e-commerce, I do as though I’ve always done them. I’ve essentially been instant-messaging since the early ’80s.

But Facebook foxes me. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand why information flows the way it does on that site or is structured the way it is; I have trouble obtaining the simplest information from it.

But most of all, I don’t get the whole "friends" concept. Mind you, I’m not the world’s most sociable guy. There’s family. There’s co-workers. There’s sources. There are nice people I see at church or at Rotary. But friends? Not so much. We’re not encouraged to have "friends" in my business. I’ve been the recipient of disapproving remarks from colleagues on the rare occasions I’ve called someone a "friend" in a column. It’s considered unprofessional.

But ever since I set up a Facebook account (I did it when my youngest daughter’s boyfriend died last year, and I’d heard his sister had set up a page where a lot of people had said nice things about him), I’ve had this steady trickle of e-mails saying

(Name) added you as a friend on Facebook.  We need to confirm that you know (name) in order for you to be friends on Facebook.

To confirm this friend request, follow the link below:

Sometimes these are people I know, usually professionally. I usually confirm them, if only to keep open the lines of communication. Some are members of my immediate family, such as my children. I approve those, of course, although "friend" seems an awfully inadequate way to define the relationship. Some are people whose names are only vaguely familiar, although I generally recognize them when I go to their pages. Then I have a dilemma — should I snub this person who has asked me to be his or her "friend," or potentially compromise myself by declaring to the world that this person is a "friend?" (This category includes a lot of people, usually younger ones, who work in politics professionally.)

Yeah, I get it that the site using the word "friend" to describe a range of relationships much broader than the original meaning, but I’m still not sure what to do.

Then there are the total strangers asking me to be their friends — some of them attractive young women (and some of them young men whose motivation I wonder about, but never mind). The very first person who asked to be my "friend" was an attractive lady (which I knew from the glamor shot) who lives in Germany and is married. I "confirmed" the friendship just so I could send her a message asking, as delicately as I could, whether we knew each other. She said we did not. OK. Whatever.

That was a year ago, and I still don’t understand what’s going on.

Vierdsen
Now, along comes a message saying that "John Vierdsen" wants to be my friend (that is allegedly a picture of him at right). That rang a bell. Sure enough, I went back and found this e-mail I’d received from Randy Page of SCRG on Oct. 13, to wit:

Brad,
I trust that you are doing well.  I noticed that “John Vierdsen” is quoted in the S.C. Blogs section again today.  From all accounts, “John Vierdsen” is a pen name because no one knows who “John Vierdsen” is.  Rumors swirl about his possible identity, but no one really knows….

So I decided to make use of my vaunted "social network." I went to the page on Facebook where I was being asked whether this John Vierdsen is my friend, and saw that we had a number of "friends" in common. I noticed they were mostly Democrats or fellow travelers, such as Bob Coble, Joe Darby, Joe Erwin, James Smith, Laurin Manning, and so on…

… and former colleague Aaron Sheinin. So I sent e-mails to both the mayor and Aaron asking if they knew who, if anyone, this guy is. The mayor responded with possibly the shortest e-mail I’ve ever gotten from him:

I do not know him.

I haven’t heard back yet from Aaron.

So can any of y’all shed light on this guy? Basically, I just want to know whether we got hoodwinked on our Monday blog rail, as Randy alleges.

And then while you’re at it, maybe you could advise me as to whether I want to be "friends" with Darrell Jackson (his is the only "friend suggestion," rather than "friend request," which I take to mean that HE didn’t want to ask me, sort of like getting a third party to ask whether you want to be friends, which sort of takes me back to the 5th grade), or Tom Fowler, or Scott Sokol, or a lovely young lady from Connecticut named "Tiffany…"

Christmas decorations. Already

21 Replies

Xmasdecor

As long as I’m in a griping, humbuggish mood, I might as well put in my bid for winning the prize for Xmasdecor2
spotting the first Christmas decorations of the "season."

I shot these pictures with my Treo at the Walmart store on Bush River Road on Saturday, Oct. 11.

And yeah, I fully expect some of y’all to be able to claim to have seen some Christmas stuff before I did, and spoil what tiny bit of satisfaction I might gain from being the first in my neighborhood to publicly gripe about it.

Bah. Double Bah. Bah squared.

Wall Street’s worst week ever

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Wall_street_wart2

Well, the stock market had its worst-ever week. But you knew that this morning, didn’t you? This just confirms it.

Those hammerheads need to calm down. Somebody take them out for a good time this weekend or something, OK? Improve their outlook on life. Buy them a lot of beers, or whatever they drink. Get them… I mean, introduce them to some companionship of the opposite sex or something. Or turn a hose on them.

Somebody besides me do it, I mean. Those people drive me crazy; I don’t want to get anywhere near them.

Wall_street_wart

Taking dumb to new depths

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Remember when I had some dismissive things to say a few months ago about the aggressively stupid promos I get on my laptop regularly from the "Real Message Center?" I’ve noticed lately, during those split-seconds it takes to close that box when it pops up, that they’ve been getting worse and worse.

At least before, there was something from time to time that at least looked like something a reasonably intelligent person who wants to keep up with entertainment news (you may consider that to be a contradiction in terms, but there is a small set of such people) might want to click on, such as clips from a new movie or something. But check out today’s offerings:

  • Pop Starlets: Beautiful and Dumb
  • Celeb Love Connections + Amazing Race 13
  • Sexy Brunettes + Wild Musicians

And yes, I know one of y’all was kind enough to tell me how to turn this thing off so I don’t get the pop-ups any more, but most days it only takes a second or less of my time, and I’ve gotten to the point of morbid fascination now. I don’t watch Reality TV, so this gives me a way to track the degradation of the culture. How will they top (or should I say "bottom") themselves? I expect at some point to see a come-on about sacrificing hot, sexy Christians to lions with laser beams attached to their heads…

The United States of France

2 Replies

A thoughtful reader shared this with me, from TIME magazine:

How We Became the United States of France

By Bill Saporito Sunday, Sep. 21, 2008
This is the state of our great republic: We’ve nationalized the financial system, taking control from Wall Street bankers we no longer trust. We’re about to quasi-nationalize the Detroit auto companies via massive loans because they’re a source of American pride, and too many jobs — and votes — are at stake. Our Social Security system is going broke as we head for a future in which too many retirees will be supported by too few workers. How long before we have national health care? Put it all together, and the America that emerges is a cartoonish version of the country most despised by red-meat red-state patriots: France. Only with worse food.

Note the piece that the phrase "We’ve nationalized the financial system" links to. That one photo of Henry Paulson is rapidly becoming ubiquitous. I used it for the Daddy Warbucks thing, and I also put it on tomorrow’s op-ed page with a column by Robert Samuelson headlined "Paulson’s panic."

Hey, that’s the United States of Freedom to you, mon ami.