Category Archives: In Our Time

Hal makes a statement

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I thought this was sort of interesting: I was sending a link to my last post to someone via e-mail, and in my note I referred to the straight majority using the shortcut "heteros."

Guess what the spell checker on Outlook wanted to change it to? "Haters." Actually, it suggested several alternatives (such as "heaters," "hereto," "meteors," "hectares," etc.), but that was its first choice.

So was the programmer of that tool trying to make a political statement, or did the boola-boola logic (or whatever in the world drives those things) just lead inevitably to that word? I believe it’s the latter, but I could see how some folks would suspect the former.

Could it be? Could Hal the devious laptop be trying to tell us all something? Nah.

Why “gay?” Why not “queer?”

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Somehow, my last, brief post having fun with Mark Sanford’s reputation for frugality quickly led to a discussion between readers about whether Abraham Lincoln was gay. Don’t ask me how, just look and see if you don’t believe me. Such is the nature of blog comment threads.

Anyway, the discussion led me off on my own mental digression. I started thinking about words.

Lincoln_statues_1To begin with, I don’t believe there was anything "gay" about Lincoln, in any sense of the word. He was pretty much chronically depressed, as I recall.

Along those lines, have you ever considered what an odd euphemism "gay" is for "homosexual?" I’ve never liked it, and I don’t know why "gay" people do. First, I don’t see why anyone would associate unreserved felicity with any particular sexual orientation, much less one that carries so much painful stigma with it. To call people who carry that burden through their lives in this hetero world "gay" is to mock the pain that must, very often, certainly be their lot. Also, it seems insulting and dismissive to me. It’s like we’re calling them "giddy" or "silly," or in some other way dismissing them as unworthy of being considered seriously.

Why people would embrace it as a way to describe themselves is beyond me. It seems, if you will forgive the term, perverse. It’s as though one is declaring, "Look at me, I’m a silly person who fulfills all the stereotypes in your head — I just go gaily through life thinking of nothing but Judy Garland, decorating my home and clothes shopping." And maybe that’s what it’s about — defiant irony. But I don’t think it works.

To see how inadequate the term is, follow bill‘s suggestion and go to Andrew Sullivan’s blog. Check out the serious thoughtfulness with which he deals with issues. Is "gay" a proper term to use to describe him, simply because he is homosexual? It certainly isn’t the first word that would come to my mind.

Even if it is embraced ironically, "gay" just doesn’t make sense to me. (Of course, I have to admit that homosexuality doesn’t make sense to me either, so I guess my lack of understanding is to be expected.) I think those more "in-your-face" activists who defiantly use the term "queer" are more on the mark. The word makes sense from both hetero- and homo- perspectives. To straight people, homosexuality is queer, in the sense of being an aberration (certainly in the statistical sense, at the very least), and so alien to the way we think that it is beyond our ken. For homosexuals themselves, it seems to be a more effective banner to fly to demonstrate pride in being different — especially if you’re trying to be defiantly ironic.

Anyway, that’s the way the words strike me.

Column on taking sides

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Katon Dawson gets it. Why doesn’t everybody?
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
OVER A LATE breakfast at a New York deli in September 2004, S.C. Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson cheerfully told me this story:Katon_1
    Years earlier, as a novice candidate who had been burned once by his own frankness, he started carrying a piece of paper that he would look at whenever he spoke to one of my colleagues. On it he had written some good advice: “Cindi Scoppe is not your friend.”
    It did not mean she was his “enemy”; it was just his reminder to be wary because a good reporter isn’t on anybody’s side.
    You see, Katon Dawson gets it. Plenty of other people don’t.
    I believe that one of my few qualifications for my job is that I am vehemently, stridently, nonpartisan. Mr. Dawson, and his Democratic counterpart Joe Erwin, would say I’m too harsh.
    But the problem isn’t just the two major parties, loathsome as they may be. It’s this ubiquitous thing of everything being divided into “sides” — you’ve got to pick, one or the other — to the point that even smart people are unable to frame issues any other way.
    Here’s another anecdote, involving the same Ms. Scoppe: A lawmaker told her there was an inconsistency on last Sunday’s editorial page.
    The editorial criticized House members for rejecting, on specious grounds, business leaders’ input in the tax reform debate. The column dissected the General Assembly’s rush to override the governor’s veto of an odious bill stripping local governments of the ability to regulate billboards in their communities.
    When Cindi told me the lawmaker said the two pieces contradicted each other, I retorted, “Huh?” If anything, they had a consistent theme: the Legislature acting against the public interest.
    But the lawmaker saw it this way: The editorial slapped lawmakers for not doing what business wanted them to do, and the column hit them for doing what “business” (the billboard industry) wanted.
    I responded, “Say what?”
    Cindi said maybe we hadn’t expressed ourselves clearly enough. At this, I got a bit shrill: “How on Earth could we have been expected to anticipate that anybody would read it THAT way?”
    And yet, people are always reading what we write that way. The whole world encourages them to perceive every public expression as pro-business or anti-business, or siding with Democrats or Republicans, conservatives or liberals, black people or white people, rich or poor, fat or thin… you get the idea. That’s the trouble. Everybody gets the idea.
    This is a profoundly flawed way of looking at the world. If you accept or reject arguments, or even facts, according to whether they help or hurt your side, how can we ever get together and solve anything in a way that serves the common good?
    And yes, I know that the news media — especially television, although print is a culprit too — help create and reinforce this dichotomous world view. But that just makes me feel more obligated to use this page to encourage multilateral discussions that help people see things as they are, rather than the way one side or the other wants them to be.
    We’re not alone in this. We ran an op-ed piece Thursday from an assistant professor at USC-Aiken who faces the exact same problem every day in the classroom.
    Steven Millies wrote about a disturbing Emory University study. When the study’s author “showed negative information to his subjects about a politician they admired, the areas of their brains that control emotion lit up, while their reasoning centers showed no new activity.” Worse, when the subjects rejected information that they did not want to hear, their brains were rewarded in a pattern “similar to what addicts receive when they get their fix.”
    The damning conclusion was “that our political opinions are dominated by emotion, and that the reasoning part of our brain is not interested in political information that challenges us. In fact, our brains will work very hard to avoid that information.”
    This means Dr. Millies has an uphill fight in trying to teach his students that “In our political choices, we should not settle for the hollow comfort of feeling gratifyingly consistent in our assurance that one party is always right and the other always is wrong.”
    The trouble is, according to polls, about two-thirds of the electorate does cling to such assurance. That makes things tough for a fair-minded professor. It also makes it tough to publish a nonpartisan editorial page, and persuade partisans that that is actually what you are doing. No matter what you wrote the day before or the day after, a partisan tends to remember only the last thing you said that ticked him off, and to take that as proof positive that you’re on that other side.
    It doesn’t help that so many editorial pages are partisan, even at the best papers. You can almost always predict which “side” The New York Times will be on, and rely upon The Wall Street Journal to take the opposite view.
    None of us is immune to wrapping ourselves in comforting notions. Look at me: I didn’t want to hear what Cindi was trying to tell me. But I try to learn. I try to anticipate the way partisans of all sorts will perceive what I’m saying, and to express myself in a way that they see what I mean. But I often fail, and often in ways that surprise me, even after three decades of observing politics.
    Now here’s another perception problem to think about: “pro-business” or “anti-business.” Well, all I can say is that I’ll try.
    In the meantime, just in case anyone is still unclear: Sometimes business people are right; sometimes they’re wrong; sometimes they’re both. And when we write about them, we’re doing our best to sort all that out.
    It’s just like S.C. lawmakers: They don’t always do stupid stuff. It’s merely coincidence that on the two issues we wrote about last Sunday, they did.

Let’s check the scoreboard again

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Maybe you can help me with this. I’m having a reading comprehension problem or something. First, read these initial four paragraphs of a story at the top of the front page of today’s New York Times:

LOY KAREZ, Afghanistan — When Haji Lalai Mama, the 60-year-old tribal elder in these parts, gamely tried to organize a village defense force against the Taliban recently, he had to do it with a relative handful of men and just three rifles. "We were patrolling and ready," he recalled.
    But they were not ready enough. The Taliban surprised them under cover of darkness by using a side road. One villager was killed, and 10 others were wounded by a grenade. Two Taliban fighters were captured in the clash. The rest disappeared into the night.
    The men at Loy Karez were exceptional in making a stand at all. Few in southern Afghanistan are ready to stand up to the Taliban, at least not without greater support or benefits from the Afghan government.
    In fact, four years after the Taliban were ousted from power by the American military, their presence is bigger and more menacing than ever, say police and government officials, village elders, farmers and aid workers across southern Afghanistan.

OK, now, let’s review the facts as related about the incident with which the story leads:

  • An old Afghan man bravely decides to organize his village’s defenses against Taliban raiders. All he can muster is "a relative handful" of fighters with only three rifles among them.
  • The enemy achieves tactical surprise and outflanks the defenders.
  • When the shooting is over, the Taliban is not in possession of the village. They have apparently — and I say "apparently" because of the sketchiness of the details — been driven away, with one villager killed and 10 wounded. Two Taliban have been captured, and the rest "disappeared into the night."

So please explain to me, how is it that Haji Lalai Mama and his plucky band "were not ready enough?" It sounds to me like they were not only plenty ready, but flexible and tough. It sounds to me like they just plain outfought the Taliban. You pretty much have to overwhelm an enemy to capture two of them and run the rest off.

So it was a defeat because, before fleeing into the night like a scalded dog, one of the raiders managed to heave a grenade, killing one and wounding several others (or maybe the one killed was a separate incident; it’s hard to tell)? How do you figure? By what standard of post-battle assessment is that a defeat for the village? Sure, you don’t want to lose anybody, but come on.

For that assessment to be valid by a common sense standard, "But they were not ready enough" would have to be followed by an account of how the defenders were wiped out, their weapons taken, the village’s food stocks stolen or burned, most of the men killed, several of the women raped, and half the homes destroyed. Or something like that. Maybe the women wouldn’t have been raped, but stoned to death instead, these being religious fanatics and all. But you know what I mean.

If you don’t know what I mean, and you think that anecdote perfectly illustrates the overall problem of folks in southern Afghanistan not being "ready to stand up to the Taliban," please explain, so that I can understand, too. The overall problem may be just as the story indicates, but if so, that was a lousy anecdote to use to make the point.

“White House Reporter Syndrome”

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Those of you who are cursed with good memories may recall my previous reference to my disdain for the White House Press Corps. Well, maybe they are to be pitied rather than vilified.

I credit TheColumbiaRecord.com blogger Bob McAlister for pointing out The Washington Post‘s revelation that what really keeps those nabobs nattering is a mental illness. And we should not blame the victims of affliction, should we?

The Post reports that Clinical Psychologist Renana Brooks has even named this malady: "White House Reporter Syndrome." She has treated several poor sufferers. And they do suffer, poor things:

"We’re one of the most reviled subsets of one of the most reviled professions,"  Dana Milbank, a  Washington Post reporter who covered the White House during Mr. Bush’s first term, said. "We’re going to lose the battle every time."

Awww. There, there.

And after all those mean things I said. Turns out they’re just plain nuts, just like those people over there.

You gotta believe

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So I see there’s this guy coming to Columbia to talk about how the Church can win back Americans lost in "soulless materialism." That sounds good. Then I see the guy is described as a "priest." But I see that in his picture that he doesn’t look like a priest.

Then I see that the Rev. James Allen is an Episcopalian, and retired at that. Oh. That explains the civvies. Okay. Anyway, maybe this is just my own prejudice as a Roman, but I’d just as soon see the Church wither away as save itself by the means he suggests.

Basically, it’s that same old depressing mantra you hear more and more these days: Here’s his way of putting it: "The emphasis on ‘right believing’ is what divides people, and it is only one theme of the Bible," opines the Rev. James Adams, founder of something called — and this is a heads-up in and of itself — "The Center for Progressive Christianity."

Well, maybe that’s so, if you’re speaking from your Cambridge, Mass., home. But down here among the great unwashed, among folks who’ve actually read the Bible (or, in my case, large swaths of it — remember, I am Catholic), it strikes a very dissonant chord.

Excuse me, but isn’t that what a religion is: A certain set of beliefs? If you don’t subscribe to those beliefs, you don’t subscribe to that religion. It’s a free country, and the door swings both ways. It’s up to you. If your goal is to be a megachurch, then you take the marketing approach and give the "customer" what he wants: Entertainment, gymnasiums, child care, coffee bars and the like.

But if you really want to discern and follow God’s truth, you’re going to have to be a grownup and accept a few "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots" that you didn’t get to vote on. In other words, you’re going to have to be humble enough to submit to something greater than your own capricious will.

As for the Bible — yeah, there’s some parts in there about parting seas, and massacring one’s enemies, and a Lion’s den, and some songs of praise, and quite a bit of fornication here and there, but the fundamental heart of it is mostly about what we’re supposed to believe and do. In fact, it’s hard to imagine it being the continuing best-seller it is without those parts. Without the morals, it would pretty much be a collection of curious ancient literary antiquities like the Epic of Gilgamesh or some such.

He says that to be more welcoming, the Church needs to be a place of "open, free discussion where nobody has to be made wrong."

Now I find myself wondering: Would no one be wrong? How about somebody who decides that all that "love thy neighbor" and "judge not lest ye be judged" stuff was for the birds, and that it was OK to hit people over the head with a hammer if they didn’t agree? I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with such a Church, and I sort of doubt that Rev. Allen would, either.

I want his name

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Who was the genius who decreed, a generation or so ago, that thenceforth, all offices would be in buildings with windows that can’t be opened?

I want his name. And his address. I want to go see him. I’d like to rearrange his face for him. Call it an extreme makeover.

I just walked out of the office — oh, around 9 p.m. — and it was gorgeous outside. About 60 degrees, and as pleasant an evening as you could ask for.

And where had I been since early this morning? In an oven.

It was about noon when the temp in my office hit 80. Then, it kept climbing. It finally hit a high of 84, before dropping to about, oh, 83 by the time I left. Not a whisper of a breeze, of course. It was worse in other people’s offices. One guy went to work from home when his hit 85. Nice if you can do that. I had to stay at my computer, because the system I was using is not accessible remotely. Security, you know. My hand was sweating on the mouse to the point that I started to wonder whether I could get electrocuted that way — or, worse, cause a short and lose the column I was working on.

It all has something to do with maintenance they’ve been doing all week. The "chillers," or some such, had to be down while the work was under way. They say they’ll be back up tomorrow afternoon.

They’d better be. If not, I have a brick on my windowsill. And two of the four walls of my office are made of glass.

Driveby I: United We WISH

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There’s a sign company on the access road along I-26 near Sunset Boulevard in West Columbia that has a particularly apropos way of advertising its wares: It’s one of those computerized electronic billboards that looks like thousands of little lights that can be lit in patterns with such sophisticated detail that they are almost photographic in appearance. (In fact, perhaps they are based on photos; I don’t know.) You know, the kind the State Fair has at the corner of Assembly and Rosewood.

Anyway, this morning I noticed that among its cycling messages is one that shows a waving American flag followed by, in big, bold letters:

"UNITED WE STAND"

We were so used to seeing that expressed by businesses and individuals right after 9/11 that we tend not to notice it when it is still expressed.

I couldn’t help thinking, sadly, that they should give it up and amend the sign to reflect reality. Maybe they should say, "United we should stand," or something like that — but I’ve noticed that most businesses tend to want to display vanilla pieties rather than messages that take sides and make a point that might tick off potential customers (with the exception of the business I’m in, of course).

"United we stand" only described America for a few wonderful weeks right after 9/11. Halcyon days. By the end of fall 2001, we had already returned to our sickeningly routine partisanship.

At least there were no tears

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I’m so disappointed in Dick Cheney. Or at least I was, when I first heard he had caved in to the all-pervasive, "reality"-charged, 24-hour media Beast that had been demanding that he make a personal appearance to share his feelings about shooting his pal Harry Whittington.

Actually, I still am.

I had hoped he’d hold out a few more days, until I could run a Sunday column cheering him on.

But he caved. Of course, he flipped off the whiny, supremely arrogant White House press corps — and the entire MSM — by doing it on Fox News. But that didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel Cheneyhumeworse, really, since it emphasized the partisanship that saturates Washington. I mean, the country is a poorer place when politicians can pick their news outlet according to their expectations of better treatment — and be right about it.

At least he didn’t follow the exact script that the Beast demands, which goes like this:

You sit down face-to-face with somebody like Barbara Walters in some place that looks like somebody’s living room, dressed casually because you just haven’t been able to bring yourself to return to business as usual (sackcloth and ashes would be nice, but the touch might be missed by secularized moderns).

And then what? Well, you break down and cry. Then, if you’re really good at this, you look straight into the camera, bite your quivering lip, give a game "thumbs-up" sign and say. "Hang in there, Harry. I’m with you, pal." And you fall to pieces again.

Well, I knew Dick Cheney wouldn’t do that. Still, even though he submitted his surrender to Brit Hume on ground of his choosing, dressed vice-presidentially and with nary a quiver, he still went on TV and pronounced most of the ritual sentiments demanded by the Beast and its gods: "one of the worst days of my life," etc…. you know, the kind of stuff no guy should have to share except with maybe his wife and his pal Harry — if them.

Sure, he was stoic and took full responsibility and said manly things like "I’m the guy who pulled the trigger," and the Beast will be far from satisfied, and we haven’t heard the end about his supposedly unforgivable arrogance.

But he still caved. Now I’ve got to figure another angle for the column.

And yes, I’m being a little ironic here. But I still liked seeing him frustrate the White House press corps all week up to now. I don’t like those guys — considered as a group, anyway. Oh, and before you liberals get all worked up in their defense, let me tell you I formed my negative impression
of them during the Clinton years, when I sat among them waiting to interview Clinton press secretary and native South Carolinian Mike McCurry. The topic of the day was some small development in the Paula Jones saga, and they were all abusing McCurry for failing to kowtow to them in some way or other. They do that to everybody, you know.

They make all of us look bad, and I think it was great that Mr. Cheney made them get their news from the Corpus Christi paper.

Are transvestites so bad?

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This first struck me in reading Wednesday’s letters to the editor (if you follow the link, it’s the first letter), but when I saw the very same argument being made in a letter in today’s paper (in this case, the last one), I had to say something.

Both letters complain about our having run a Pat Oliphant cartoon making fun of all the hoo-hah overOliph_2 "Brokeback Mountain." For those too lazy to follow the links, here’s an excerpt from the first letter:

The comment from the “cowboy”: “Of course, they’re pearls, silly — what
else would I wear with basic black?” is what puzzles me. I know a
thousand gay men, including many in Darlington County, and not one of
them speaks this way, owns a set of pearls or has any interest in
women’s jewelry. That’s quite a slur.

It is?, I thought. Anyway, I set that aside until the Thursday letter, which in part said:

The cartoon appearing on the Saturday Opinion page regarding the harm
done to the cowboy image by the film “Brokeback Mountain” was a cheap
shot aimed at perpetuating insulting stereotypes of gay people.

Do you see the common thread (aside from the fact that neither writer is overly blessed with a sense of humor)? In both cases, the cartoon supposedly insults gay people by associating them with transvestites. This suggests that there’s something wrong with a man who wants to wear women’s clothing (or in this case, accessories).

This seems kind of judgmental to me. Did it seem that way to you?

This forced association of homosexuality and transvestism, which Mr. Oliphant is obviously using to ironic effect to mock the controversy (stereotypes are a fundamental part of the language of cartoons; the more absurd, the better), reminds me of a previous work of humor. I’m thinking of a particular sketch in Woody Allen’s "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But were Afraid to Ask)," the one titled, "Are Transvestites Homosexual?"

It certainly wasn’t the best bit in the movie. I vaguely recall Lou Jacobi being mildly amusing when, having snuck upstairs to the master bedroom, he pranced about in great delight wearing a dress belonging to his hostess. I don’t recall the putative question ever being answered, except that it seemed obvious that he was not supposed to be gay, but was a "regular guy" who got off on cross-dressing.

But that title, which I suppose came directly from the original book, seems in retrospect to contain a judgmental suggestion aimed not at transvestites (comical as they may presumably be), but at homosexuals. In "Are Transvestites Homosexual?," there’s a certain hint of, "Is there anything really wrong with transvestites?"

That was 1972 — well before it became unacceptable in Hollywood to suggest that there’s anything wrong about being homosexual. Much has changed since then. Today, we’ve got folks sticking up for homosexuals (defenders of tolerance, in other words) who call any suggestion of transvestism — even an ironic one — a "slur."

Is this progress?

And you thought Vegas couldn’t get any tackier…

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I’ll give you a little rest from writing your own captions. Here’s a real-life photo and caption from AP. Leave it to an operation with Myrtle Beach ties to teach tacky to Las Vegas. Maybe this could be taken to the next level if they made a "reality" TV show about it, but that’s about the only way I can think of.

Hooters

Bartenders gather at the bar area for training at Hooters hotel-casino
in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Feb.1, 2006. Hooters’ first ever
hotel-casino, featuring 696 rooms and a 30,000 square foot casino with
more than 200 Hooters Girls, officially opens on Friday. (AP Photo/Jae
C. Hong)

A legitimate civil liberties issue?

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It’s not often I look at a "civil liberties" issue and see any merit in the libertarian position. To me, the constitution — properly and conservatively understood — does an excellent job of protecting all the personal rights we need, and I tend to be impatient with people who either see a "slippery slope" threat to those freedoms in everything government does, or want to invent entirely new "rights" (as the U.S. Supreme Court did in Griswold and its extension, Roe).

But I have to say that in this case, I can see some legitimate worries. Forcing people who may do a bad thing in the future — but haven’t done a thing yet — to take antipsychotic drugs is disturbing. For those who have trouble getting the link, I’ll explain that the WSJ story is about a "national trend," pushed by a "maverick psychiatrist" named E. Fuller Torrey, to pass laws that force psychotics to take their medicine or have the police come take them away to lock them up in the not-so-funny farm.

The thing is, his main argument is that he believes this helps "prevent crime," and here’s how he has sold the idea:

Dr. Torrey keeps an online database with hundreds of grisly anecdotes about mentally ill people who killed the innocent. They include a jobless drifter who pushed an aspiring screenwriter in front of a subway train and a farmer who shot a 19-year-old receptionist to death. Influenced by such stories, Michigan, New York, Florida and California are among the states that have toughened their mental-health treatment laws since 1998, when Dr. Torrey formed the Treatment Advocacy Center to lobby for forced care.

We have here shades of "Minority Report" and A Clockwork Orange (what with the idea of letting the rozzes lovet a poor bezoomy malchick so some veck can mess with his gulliver rather than letting him make up his rassoodock by his oddy-knocky).

So am I convinced this is a bad idea? No, but I’m willing to concede that I’m not sure either way. Both the libertarian point of view (how can you arrest people who’ve done nothing wrong?) and the societal protection consideration paired with the argument that opponents "want to preserve a person’s right to be psychotic" seem to have merit.

I present this to you folks out there for debate. But first, here are some pros and cons I see. I’ll start with the pros:

  • People with untreated mental illnesses are one of South Carolina’s great challenges. It’s a huge factor in homelessness, overcrowded jails and hospital emergency rooms, a lack of proper care (since jailers, for instance, know little of looking after the mentally ill), and yes, crime.
  • Medication has been developed that can effect remarkable results with these brain diseases. But one manifestation of mental illness may be that the patient won’t take his meds on his own. In such a situation, when the choice is between someone wandering the streets out of his head and a functioning member of society, maybe the state should step in to act in loco parentis, so to speak, and require him to do what’s good for him — and what’s good for the others affected and potentially affected by his sickness.
  • I’ve seen a lot of harm done by overconcern for mental patient’s rights — excessive deinstitutionalization, for one. Why not just act to fix the problem?

And now some cons:

  • Suppose the police do haul them in. We don’t have the psych wards to put them in. Taken a step further, we could go a long way toward fixing the problem of the mentally ill wandering the streets by simply properly funding both insitutionalized and community-based care.
  • We don’t really understand the brain, and while there’s a plethora of "miracle drugs" out there, they don’t always have the expected effect. Based on my own experience with anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds, depending upon your dosage and other, metabolic, factors, you can have side effects that make you feel even worse, or create whole new problems. I’ve known too many people have to take one psychiatric drug after another, until their shrink manages to help them by trial and error (or they just quit taking anything, which under the circumstances may not be an irrational reaction).
  • Whose standards do we use to define "what’s good for him: Big Nurse‘s or R.P McMurphy’s?

OK, what are your thoughts?

Outsourcing the republic

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Outsourcing the deliberative process
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE POSITION we take in the above editorial is an uncomfortable one. I say that not because using a “BRAC” approach to consolidate school districts is a bad idea. In fact, it’s a great one. But it shouldn’t be.
    Our system of representative democracy is all about the deliberative process: We, the people, elect representatives to go to Congress or the Legislature and study complex issues in detail, debate them, make tough decisions for the sake of the whole nation or state, and then come back and face the voters.
    This proposal sidesteps that process: It empowers a separate body — not directly elected — to address a long-neglected statewide problem. The members of that body do all the studying and work out all the details — that is, the actual discernment. Then they hand the whole package to the elected body for a simple “yes” or “no.”
    The tragedy is that this is apparently the only way that our small state can do away with the shameful waste of having 85 school districts — some of them incredibly tiny, each with its own separate administration.
    Why? Because elected representatives won’t touch it. Why? Because they’re elected.
    Anyone with common sense looking objectively at this can see that it would be insane not to consolidate districts. But any representative who advocates shuttering a local district faces the danger
of not getting re-elected.
    So we find ourselves in a situation in which the most effective approach is to outsource the deliberative process. And school consolidation isn’t the only tough state issue that our delegates may choose to sub-contract.
    S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell is proposing the same approach on tax reform. He would have a special panel draw up a list of sales tax exemptions to eliminate. Why? Because elected representatives don’t have the guts to face the narrow constituencies (from auto dealers to newspapers) whose tax breaks such a plan might eliminate.
    The truth nowadays is that on some issues, our republic’s deliberative process freezes up and dies like a car engine without a drop of oil in it.
    That’s how “BRAC” — for Base Realignment and Closure — entered the language to start with. It was impossible for Congress to achieve savings and efficiencies by closing and consolidating domestic military bases. Why? Because every member of Congress had to have one. Or two, or more.
    Instead of an objective comparison of the relative merits of this or that military facility, followed by tough but smart decisions, the only sort of “debate” that occurred before BRAC went like this: “You keep my base open, and I’ll scratch your back, too.”
    Our system is dysfunctional — at least on issues that involve sacred cows — not because representatives are out of touch, but because they are never out of touch with home long enough to collaborate seriously with their colleagues for the greater good.
    Most advocates of term limits say lawmakers get “corrupted” by Washington or Columbia to the point that they forget the wishes of the folks back home. Hardly.
    Syndicated columnist George Will has advocated term limits for the opposite reason. He says the only way lawmakers will stop listening to the folks back home long enough to think is if they cannot run for re-election.
    I oppose term limits for various reasons, including the fact that I’d rather have laws made by people with some experience at it. But we’ve got to find some way to make critical decisions that politicians with their eyes on the next election refuse to face.
    One good thing about a BRAC is that it can be seen as representative democracy the way it was intended to work: A group is delegated to study the issues with few distractions and deliberate until a rational plan emerges.
    This may be the only way our elected representatives ever vote on a proposal that takes the whole state’s interest into account. A plan that makes the tough calls would probably never make it to the floor otherwise.
    I like to think our system is timeless. But that reckons without technology: In the days before the 24-hour news cycle, blogs, cell phones and mass e-mails, representatives had a chance to concentrate constructively on issues and make decisions accordingly. The cacophony of modern communications makes that nearly impossible.
    Some look at this situation and come up with a whole other way: skirting the republican system entirely. Gov. Mark Sanford would ask voters to curtail the Legislature’s power to appropriate, by setting an arbitrary constitutional limit on spending growth.
    His reasoning sounds a bit like ours: The system isn’t working. When I asked how he could advocate undermining “small-R” republican ideals, he said: “You need to be more aware of the political environment that you’re operating in — be less, you know, idealistic, less, uh, you know, high and lofty, and just get down into the gears of how our government system actually works.”
    Talk about being disillusioned. Of course, I can identify. But there’s a difference. While the BRAC idea reflects a lack of faith in the Legislature’s deliberative fortitude, it does not abandon faith in deliberation
itself. In fact, it gives the General Assembly a little help in that area.
    The contrast between such a careful, studious process of objective decision-making and what the governor is proposing — a quick Election Day show of hands, yes or no, on an unfathomably complex fiscal question — could hardly be greater.
    I’m still not thrilled about having to institute a “work-around” to set policy, but comparing a “BRAC” to setting future budgets in a single plebiscite makes me feel a lot better about it.

This thing’s gone far enough

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OK, I should probably admit to you where I was going when I drove by the girl who was talking on the phone while jogging. I mean, if I don’t face up to my problem, how am I ever going to get better?

I was on my way to … well, to this place again. What’s so bad, or noteworthy about that? Well, this was the first time ever that I left work and drove halfway across town and back for no other purpose than to fetch myself a cup of coffee. In the past, it’s always been, "Hey, I think I’ll go book-browsing," or, "I have an errand to run in Five Points," or, "I need to go to a hotspot to do some blogging" — and pretty much always on a weekend.

(Oh, and for those of you keeping score on my time management: Except for that 20 minutes, which substituted for a lunch hour, I was very productive the rest of the day. Especially after that last coffee. So judge not, lest ye also become a blogger.)

This time, I didn’t even pretend there was an excuse. I had been thinking about my next cup of coffee ever since I had my last one, at breakfast (unless you count that half a cup I got at mid-morning, after begging the guy in the downstairs canteen to open back up just for me to get a refill, and then draining what little was left in the insulated carafe thingie). So first chance I got between meetings and such, I put on my coat, muttered something about "an errand or two to run," and drove straight there.

Here I am acting all bemused at the idiosyncracies of youth (my last post) one minute, then the next I’m standing in a long line of them waiting for a caffeine fix. I listen to them rattle off elaborate, absurdly complex orders that sound like litanies chanted in a foreign tongue — with repetitive responses intoned by the help behind the counter — and edge forward, waiting for when I can order my "plain coffee." The lad in front of me actually asks, "What do you have?" The reply is, "Depends on whether you want hot or cold." Everyone — except me — is hugely entertained when he asks for something in-between, and is informed that’s one thing they don’t have.

By the time he removes his inconvenient self and I belly up, I’ve scrapped plans for "just a small one," and order the "grande." The counterman overfills it — no objections from me there — and I ruin a perfectly good dress shirt and pair of gray pants trying to drive back. Ah, but it’s worth it. It tastes lovely. I even find myself tearing away the insulating wrap to savor the inanity of "The Way I See It No. 49." I am utterly lacking in discrimination at this point.

This is madness. I managed to quit Vicodin when I had taken it day and night for weeks after I broke my ribs kickboxing several years back. (And believe me, I felt its pull. No wonder it’s the favorite addiction of TV writers, from "House" to "The Book of Daniel.") So what’s with this? Why does this dark brew charm me to greater foolishness each day?

Well, I’m going to summon what shreds of self-respect I have left. Tomorrow, one coffee with breakfast. A big one. But that’s it. Or maybe another small one, if they’re just going to dump it out anyway. But no more mad, mid-day quests.

Today I hit rock-bottom. There’s only one way to go now.

Talking the walk

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I saw a new thing today.

You’ve probably noticed, when you drive through the USC campus, that about 50 percent of the kids walking from class to class have mobile phones glued to their ears.

Well, today I saw a girl running — as in, jogging, not hurrying — through the walking, talking crowd, holding her phone to her ear. I’m not talking headset or one of those fancy Bluetooth dealies that are now all the rage, but holding the actual handset to her head with her right arm while her left pumped dutifully back and forth to the rhythm of her pace.

I don’t get it. And I’m not just talking about the fact that at my age, if I ran in such an awkward, asymmetrical position I’d get a crick in my neck that would last for weeks.

When I was their age, I enjoyed solitude. OK, let’s face it; I was a little antisocial, even Raskolnikov-like. But not to a seriously abnormal degree (I don’t think).

I just appreciated peace and quiet, whenever I could get some. And I cherished being incommunicado most of the time. That is, I would have cherished it if I could have imagined that I would live in a future in which such a state was unattainable.

I actually enjoyed thinking. How do you ever get to experience that, much less find out whether you like it or not, if you’re always chattering?

Who put the ‘sip’ in ‘insipid?’

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Two confessions:

  1. I’m hooked on Starbucks, although only moderately so. I hold my consumption of their House Blend to once a week, most of the time. (While in Memphis the week after Christmas, I’ll admit I drank it daily because an outlet was nearby; it nearly ruined my appreciation of the Ritazza joe they sell in the canteen down in the basement here at work, which normally I love.) It would be so much nicer if I gave my custom to some nice, local coffee house, but I leave that to my kids. They’re into that "Friends" kind of scene. To me, coffee’s not a social thing. I duck in, get it and go — unless I’m at a bookstore, in which case I quietly browse while drinking it. For this reason, I think it’s great that Starbucks is moving toward drive-thru. I can hardly wait for them to do that here — preferably on MY side of the river.
  2. I find those little philosophical musings they print on the side of their cups, under the heading "The Way I See It," irritatingly trite and inane. Fortunately, they’re usually covered by the brown insulating sleeve. But I sometimes peel that off (I put a lot of sugar in it, which makes anything that spills over the side quite sticky) and read the musings anyway. I don’t know why. Morbid curiosity, perhaps. Or maybe sneering at these banal observations makes me feel better about drinking the coffee. I don’t know.

Here’s an example, dubbed "The Way I See It #61:"

Imagine we are all the same. Imagine we agree about politics, religion and morality. Imagine we like the same types of music, art, food and coffee. Imagine we all look alike. Sound boring? Differences need not divide us. Embrace diversity. Dignity is everyone’s human right.

This is the considered opinion of one Bill Brummel (Beau‘s great-great-great grandson, perhaps?), identified thusly: "Documentary filmmaker. His programs focus on human rights issues."

Is there anything wrong with anything he said? No. But does it provoke thought? No. In fact, by the time he got to the bumper-sticker sentiment, "Embrace diversity," my brain had nearly shut down, grande coffee notwithstanding. Talk about boring.

Variety is the spice of life, and so on. We all agree on that. But when I see something this mind-numbingly obvious represented as profundity worthy of mass reproduction, I find I want to argue with it. I want to say something like, "You know, it would be great if we’d go ahead and all agree on morality. If there were fewer people out there disagreeing with the consensus on morality, we’d have lot a less rape, murder and child molesting going on. There would still be some of those things, of course, because it is tragically human to do things we know is wrong. What’s really unbearably outrageous is people doing things that we all pretty much know are wrong and defending them as being OK, and condemning those who would censure them as narrow-minded. Such people’s battle cry is "WHOSE morality?,’ as though there were no absolutes, when there are. Seriously, can’t you think of ANYTHING that is just plain wrong, no matter who says it’s right? What do you have to say about that, Mr. ‘Imagine there’s no heaven?’ How about the crimes I mentioned above? Couldn’t you draw the line at child abuse? And if you could, wouldn’t you have to admit that there IS legitimacy to drawing lines, meaning that diversity of thought and attitudes is NOT always good? Huh?"

OK, so maybe that wouldn’t fit on the cup. But I think it would be more worth the ink.

Dang

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I remember some comedienne — apparently Rita Rudner — saying 15 or 20 years ago that she refused to buy anything technological until she got a written guarantee that nobody was going to invent anything else.

Those of us who had bought the White Album on vinyl, cassette and CD by that time could identify.

But I really thought I was safe on this one. I really thought DVDs were going to be a smart buy. I’m really into movies, and when I was a kid I thought that if ever I were as rich as Howard Hughes, I’d own copies of all my favorite films so I could watch them any time I wanted. And I’m not talking about "Ice Station Zebra" here.

But when VHS came out, I confined myself to taping the edited versions they showed on TV. I generally didn’t think buying the movies themselves on tape would be a wise investment, and I was right. That’s why you can pick up the few remaining on store shelves today for a song.

But DVDs were different. They were digital, and ones and zeroes would always be ones and zeroes. If a more advanced format came along, they should be easily transferable with little or no loss of quality, right? You couldn’t say that about the analog versions.

So I started collecting some of my favorites. As a father of five, I’ve never been one to spend much on toys for myself, but I wasn’t shy about making lists of what I liked and did not yet have for my family to consider for Christmas, my birthday and Father’s Day.

So gradually, I built up my my modest film library to where it fills, say, a couple of bookshelves. All primo stuff, too. And whenever possible, I went for the widescreen or letterbox format. Sure, Steve McQueen might look pretty small in "The Great Escape" on my old-fashioned, nearly-square 27-inch — but I was looking to the future.

In fact, I was at Best Buy just last night, exchanging one of the two copies of "Snatch" I got for Christmas for one of "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," and while I was there, I couldn’t resist checking out those 50-inch plasma babies and dreaming of the day when they drop down to my workadaddy price range.

Then, this morning, I got around to perusing the Week in Review section in Sunday’s NYT, and ran across this outrage.

For those of you too lazy to follow the link, it says:

DVD movies look just fine on TV. But if you’ve recently bought a
high-definition screen, you may be surprised to discover that current
DVD movies don’t actually play in high definition.

Maybe that’s not too bad. I mean, if my movies look as good as they do now, only wider and bigger, I could live with that and be satisfied. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that just in case you want to start buying DVDs that do play in high-def, you’ve got to make a bet that risks wasting even more money than the suckers who bought Beta in the early 80s.

That, in fact, is the point of the story — that two mutually exclusive formats have been drawn up for high-def DVDs, and it’s not just Sony on one side and the rest of the world on the other. Apple, Panasonic and 20th Century Fox are backing one pony, and Microsoft, Sanyo and Warner Brothers are putting their money on the other.

There is some good news, though: "Both types of players will be able to play conventional DVDs." Just not in high-definition. Well, I can live with that. But still.

Judicial independence column

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America must uphold judicial
independence at home, too
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
WHAT DO Viktor Yushchenko, Saddam Hussein, Clement Haynsworth and Samuel Alito all have in common?
    Judicial independence.
    That is to say, all have been at the center of events that illustrate the importance of that criticalUkraine2 element, which anchors our republic in the rule of law.
    This is what was on South Carolina Chief Justice Jean Toal’s mind when she spoke to the Columbia Rotary on Monday.
    She started off with last year’s Ukrainian election, which ultimately led to Mr. Yushchenko’s election as president — but not until the bully boys behind Viktor Yanukovych had tried everything from election fraud to assassination by poison to keep the people’s choice from power.
    What saved the day? Well, the “Orange Revolution” in the streets had a lot to do with it, as did international pressure from the United States and others. But ultimately, there would not have been a happy ending for democracy if the Ukrainian supreme court Ukraine1had not stepped in — after the central election committee had refused to hear fraud complaints — and ordered a second runoff election, declaring the results of the crooked first one invalid.
    “How did the Ukraine Supreme Court have the courage and the tools to conduct this important judicial review?” Chief Justice Toal asked. “Many credit the… strong decision for the rule of law to their training by a team of American judges and lawyers sent on an outreach mission to newly emerging democracies to school their judges in the art of creating and operating an independent court system.”
    It is commonly understood that “America is exporting Democracy in the form of free elections” all over the world, to Afghanistan and Iraq certainly, but also less visibly to Bosnia, Saudia Arabia, and so on, she said. But just as importantly, we are “also exporting the idea of the importance of a stable court system.”
    Saddam Hussein knows that, and so do his most violent supporters. That’s why Baathists assassinated a judge involved in charging the former (and would-be future) dictator. It’s also why Saddam has done so much to challenge the viability of the court trying him, from theatrics in the courtroom to refusal to show up.
    The old order in Iraq knows that an independent judiciary that enjoys broad public confidence isSaddam_trial yet another nail in their coffin.
    The chief justice’s remarks remind me of something Sen. Lindsey Graham told me recently. While others measure progress toward success in terms of Iraqi army battalions and police forces trained and effective, he has thought in terms of a functioning cadre of judges who value law over the will of men. That’s one reason he thinks of American disengagement in terms of years rather than the months that political expedience would dictate.
    As Ms. Toal put it, America must be “a beacon to the world,” shining a light on “what living by the rule of law can contribute to the liberty of all.”
    But for the judiciary to be effective, it must enjoy public acceptance — which is not at all the same as “agreement.”
    That’s why she worries about the intersection of politics and judicial selection in Washington.
She tries to stay hopeful, and has seen recent signs that things can go well, even inside the Beltway. She said it will “be interesting to see whether (the nomination of) Alito follows the same positive process” as that of Chief Justice John Roberts.
    “One can only pray for the republic that that is the way it proceeds.” Mr. Roberts was eminently qualified, and was treated accordingly. Ms. Toal said she doesn’t know all there is to know about Mr. Alito, but “what I do know suggests that he is in the cream of the cream,” she said in a Thursday interview.
    But she worries that Senate Democrats, frustrated that they found no chinks in Mr. Roberts’ armor, are determined to make up for it now. And when politicians make up their minds to do that, the stuff is going to fly.
    She’s seen it before — when South Carolinian Clement Haynsworth was nominated by Richard Nixon in 1969 to replace Abe Fortas on the nation’s high court.
    She was working in the Haynsworth firm at the time, and her husband was Judge Haynsworth’s clerk. She watched as her fellow Democrats “drummed up” all sorts of bogus accusations at Judge Haynsworth, who was “revered and highly respected” by both sides of the political fence.
    But after Republicans had succeeded in blocking Lyndon Johnson’s nomination of Justice Fortas to be chief justice, “Democrats vowed that they would go after the first nominee of Nixon as payback.” So they did, with Ted Kennedy and Birch Bayh leading the charge.
    This was long before the verb “to Bork” entered the language. But things have only gotten worse as the years have passed.
    “Too often, what we are doing is judging the judges on the basis of the hot-button issues,” said Ms. Toal, when “The real examination ought to be, is he fair and will he call them as he sees them?”
    Many will remember that as a politician, Ms. Toal was a Democrat. But she was “an anomaly — a pro-life Democrat.” So she was never one to embrace the litmus tests of Washington.
    Being a judge, and one who is particularly devoted to her calling, strengthens her aversion to what she fears the fight over Mr. Alito could become.
    But you don’t have to be chief
justice to agree with her. All you have to be is someone who respects the rule of law to understand that you’re not supposed to try to “put someone on there who will sing your song.”

Keeping the ‘Un’ in ‘Unparty’

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A comment by GS Gantt deserves a prominent reply, so I’m making a separate post of it. He wrote, in part:

Your "UNPARTY" idea has merit in that it would be in opposition to
the Democrats and Republicans, such opposition being desperately
needed. But I’m sure you know full well how terribly difficult and
expensive it would be to actually create a "third party". Besides, the
Dems/Repubs would fight this vehemently and they would probably win.
Incumbency plus money equals POWER!, and they’ve got all three.

If you’re serious (and I don’t think you are), why not pursue the
only option that has a chance of unseating the career politicians? This
would be the WRITE-IN campaign vote. Such an option would require
nowhere near the money or politics it would take to actually create a
real third party.

Mr. Gantt, I’m not sure what you mean by "serious." I’m as serious as a crutch about the need for alternatives to the current situation. My job is to throw out the ideas — and have fun doing so when I can — and hope some of them will take root and lead to action.

I’d love to see somebody run for office on the Unparty ticket. It would be really interesting to see how the public reacts. Personally, I’m hopeful, given the statistics in a recent David Brooks column. He wrote that a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that only 24 percent of Americans see the Republicans as representing their priorities, and only 26 percent see Democrats that way.

That leaves 50 percent for us to work with. None of that stuff about money and organization worries me — let the actual political parties worry about that. This is about the power of an idea, which can be like a mustard seed.

And the idea is that parties don’t matter. People matter. Ideas matter. The good of the country, and of the whole world, matter. Doing the right, smart, practical thing for the greater good matters. But parties, and ridiculously abused terms such as "liberal" and "conservative," do not.

It doesn’t matter whether a new party comes into being, as long as the grip of the other two is loosened, and people see beyond the limits of partisanship. Then the smart ideas — rather than the politically correct dogmas of right or left — will come to the fore, people who advocate them will be elected, and the country and the world will be better off.

How’s that for an Unparty manifesto? Or the beginning of one, anyway…

The column that wasn’t

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I had this great idea for a column that would have illustrated some of the economic and technological challenges to the newspaper business that play into the market perceptions that have led to the current situation in which the company that owns my newspaper finds itself.

Basically, I was going to write about the dilemmas that face even me, a loyal newspaper guy, as I face Christmas shopping with little time and money, and the convenience of e-commerce right at my fingertips.

I would have included several examples from this past weekend of shopping — first at the fine establishments of our local retailers (that is to say, our advertisers), then on the Web (sometimes the Web sites of those very same retail companies that have stores here, sometimes not). I was inspired when, after caving in and buying a couple of things on-line — one of them something completely unavailable locally, the other something that just wasn’t in stock at the stores I had visited in search of it — I said to my wife, "Well, we just took food out of our own mouths by failing to do business with local merchants."

She said, "But those things weren’t available locally." I said that if it had not been for the Internet, we would have waited while a local merchant back-ordered the second item, and on the first — the specially item never available locally — we would have come up with some other gift idea.

Anyway, I was pitching this column idea this morning to my crew, and getting enthusiastic about the possibilities, when it suddenly hit me: I can’t do this column now; it would mean telling the world what I’m getting certain people for Christmas. Sure, I could be vague the way I’ve been in this post, but not being specific about the gifts, right down to brand and model number, would take the life out of the thing — and not answer some obvious questions, such as, "What was it you couldn’t get here, and why?"

It would be sort of like a Tom Clancy novel without detailed descriptions of the weapon systems — what’s the point?

Oh, by the way, I should note that the best bargain I got all weekend was bought from a local merchant, and was specifically advertised in The State. So there.