Category Archives: In Our Time

“Second-rate?” I beg to differ

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I finally managed to find a way to link to this Wall Street Journal op-ed piece — which several kind folks have brought to my attention — that I think will work. Let me know if you have trouble with it, in which case I’ll go back to the drawing board.

While I’m at it, though, I might as well point out that this is another example of the sort of analysis of Knight Ridder’s situation that shows the writer knows not of what he speaks.

I’m not so much quibbling with his calling Knight Ridder a group of "second-rate newspapers." I can’t, because he doesn’t state by what standard he is rating them. Personally, I believe The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are probably the two best papers in the country. Note that I say "probably," because unlike the author of the op-ed piece, I do not regard myself as omniscient. One would have to read every paper in the country every day, and come up with some way of standardizing judgments of them, to state authoritatively which papers are the best in the nation.

Anyway, after those two, I’m not sure where to go next. The Chicago Tribune? The L.A. Times? The Washington Post? I don’t know even what I think on that score. So let’s say the Times and the Journal are first-rate, no doubt about it. Do you cut it off there? Does that make the Trib, the LAT and the WashPost second-rate? If so, that’s fine company to be in.

I suspect that Mr. Ellis is drawing the line somewhat below that level, but I don’t know; he doesn’t explain. So we’ll let that go.

But when he repeatedly refers to Knight Ridder papers as "second-rate information providers," saying that it is unsurprising that broadband-enabled consumers would abandon them, I have to say, Hold on. This is where he’s showing the sort of ignorance that is typical among analysts who keep pronouncing ex cathedra from Wall Street that newspapers are doomed to disappear.

I don’t know (or care that much) about other Knight Ridder newspapers, but I would like Mr. Ellis to cite a source of news and analysis about South Carolina that is clearly superior to The State. Oh, I suppose the Greenville and Charleston papers have their fans who would argue that they are better on that score, but I’d disagree with them. And I don’t think anyone could make any kind of a case that there is a better source of information on the Midlands than my own newspaper.

If he could cite just one such source, I would be amazed. I’m quite confident that he can’t.

See, this is where the understanding of folks who view the newspaper industry from New York or Boston or Washington often goes awry. They misunderstand what this business is about. It’s about communities. Sure, you can go online and find many better and more complete sources about the recent tsunami, or British politics or the situation in the Mideast. But most newspapers exist to tell people what’s going on right where they live. And they have no serious competition in this endeavor.

If all newspapers (and I use "newspapers" to include their Web incarnations; I’m by no means wedded to dead trees) disappeared tomorrow, someone would start up a new one in every good-sized community in the nation. Why? Because there’s a market for the information that only newspapers provide — however they deliver that information to you.

Yes, newspapers (while remaining profitable, a fact that Wall Street willfully overlooks) are still stumbling around trying to find a way to make enough money to support their news-gathering operations on the Internet. One of the things holding us back is that there is still a market for the dead-tree version. Otherwise, we could ditch that altogether and eliminate more than half our cost, making it much easier to compete on-line.

But I believe we’ll work it out eventually. In the meantime, newspapers remain the first-rate providers of local news, by virtue of the fact that there’s nothing better.

KR Alumni: Good journalism is good business

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OK, one more on this navel-gazing subject and then I’ll move on to something else.

I thought you might find this piece, about a letter that former Knight Ridder journalists circulated over the last few days, interesting in light of the current situation in which the corporation — and, more relevantly to you and me, its newspapers — find t hemselves.

Here is their statement, as reported by Editor & Publisher:

    John S. Knight, a founder of the company known today
as Knight Ridder, believed –- and proved — that excellent journalism is
good business. The undersigned, all alumni of Knight Ridder, have lived
that creed.
    As did the late Jack
Knight, we believe profit is not merely nice but necessary. Knight
Ridder routinely has generated double-digit operating profits -– such as
last year’s 19.4 percent. We understand the obligation of an
institutional investor to maximize return on investment. An investor
for whom double digits are insufficient is free to sell Knight Ridder
stock. An investor who instead demands the sale or dismantling of
Knight Ridder merely in the name of a larger profit margin is engaged
not in good business but in greed.
    As
did Jack Knight, we speak out of confidence in, not fear of, the future
of the good business of excellent journalism. There is durable value in
businesses that treat their citizens, their communities and their
employees with respect. New technology is an ally of, not a threat to,
trustworthy and nimble media. Competition gives rise to innovation and
efficiency, much as recent declines in print circulation have been
accompanied by increased electronic readership.
    Knight
Ridder is not merely another public company. It is a public trust. It
must balance corporate profitability with civic purpose. We oppose
those who would cripple the purpose by coercing more profit. We abhor
those for whom good business is insufficient and excellent journalism
is irrelevant.
    We have watched
mostly in silent dismay as short-term profit demands have diminished
long-term capacity of newsrooms in Knight Ridder and other public media
companies. We are silent no more. We will support and counsel only
corporate leadership that restores to Knight Ridder newspapers the
resources to do excellent journalism. We are prepared collectively to
nominate candidates for the Knight Ridder board. We wish to reassert
John Knight’s creed.

The signers, all of whom are listed at the link, include some highly prominent former journalists and executives who have left the KR ranks in recent years. The group said they "are prepared collectively to nominate candidates for the Knight Ridder board," candidates who see the newspapers’ mission as they do.

Corporate’s reaction, expressed in E&P by KR spokesman Polk Laffoon, was that "This is a fine gesture and a well-intentioned gesture by good and honorable people." He went on to say that "Unfortunately, the reality is that more than 90% of
Knight Ridder shares are institutionally held and more than a third of
them are held by three institutions."

Mr. Laffoon, vice president for corporate relations, was quoted by The Philadelphia Inquirer as saying:

"I wish there were an identifiable and strong
correlation between quality journalism as we all define it and strong
and growing newspaper sales. If that were the case, we would not only
know how to meet some of the challenges we would face today, but we
would thrive on doing it. I wish it were that simple. Unfortunately it
isn’t."

So now you’ll want to know what I think, as a current employee of a Knight Ridder newspaper. Well, on that subject, I’ll quote the composite character played by Eric Bana in "Black Hawk Down" — based, incidentally, on a series of stories by Mark Bowden, a former reporter for The Inquirer. Mr. Bowden is one of the "alumni" who signed the above statement.

Mr. Bana was speaking to an actor portraying a real-life hero of the battle of Mogadishu, Staff Sgt. Matt Eversmann:

"You know what I think? It don’t really matter what I think. Once that first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that (expletive) just goes right out the window…. Just watch your corner; get all your men back here alive."

Good advice, that, even if no literal bullets are flying. Nobody in San Jose or on Wall Street is asking what I think, and my situation — and those of the people and pages for which I’m responsible — will pretty much be the same whatever I think. We’ve got plenty to deal with right here, addressing the issues of importance to all of us in South Carolina, and trying to put out better journalism each day that we do it. That’s my mission, and that’s how I intend to occupy my time while all the big money people work out their politics and all that stuff.

When I’ve got something else to say about it, I’ll let you know.

Speaking of ‘mature’ industries…

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Newspaper companies may seem a bit hapless as they flounder about trying to adjust to new business models and market conditions, but for sheer cluelessness and self-delusion, it’s hard to beat that supreme icon of American capitalism, General Motors.

In its weekend edition, The Wall Street Journal quoted GM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner as saying early this year:

"We’ve been ahead 73 years in a row, and I think the betting odds are we’ll be
ahead for the next 73 years."

That was in the context of this story, which led with this statement:

Toyota Motor Corp. is making a big bet that it can ride a host of new
models past struggling General Motors Corp. next year to become the
world’s biggest maker of cars.Toyota_1

This is something I can look at with somewhat greater objectivity than I can the news biz, and my snap reaction to the move by Toyota is, "More power to them."

Why? Because Toyota has produced a higher-quality product at a reasonable price (or at least "reasonable" by 21st century standards). Given that, the company deserves to come out on top. Does it hurt my national pride a little to see my country outstripped by something it has historically done best? Sure. But by our own standards of fair play, Toyota at this point it entitled to take the lead. If the American company starts doing its thing better again, it will retake the honors.

Instead, GM’s reaction is the standard, knee-jerk, stock market-driven reaction of many threatened companies: Cut costs. Having retrenched on benefits, the maker of Chevrolet et al. is planning to lay off 4,000 employees — a tenth of its white-collar work force. It’s a little hard to get all sentimental about an American company that is putting that many Americans out of work.

Meanwhile, Toyota will be hiring Americans to build its cars, possibly even in Michigan itself. Toyota isn’t contracting, but growing. How? Through quality and innovation. Toyota not only makes the world’s most reliable cars, it also has earned the reputation of being the industry leader in new technology. Next year, the Camry will be available as a hybrid. And personally, I think the company is being overly conservative predicting it will only sell 30,000 of them.

As I’ve said before, I’m no biz wiz, but I continue to have this gut belief that the way to grow a business is not to cut costs, but to improve the product.

Despite what some Japanese guy said awhile back about Americans being "a work force too lazy to compete with Japan," I think we can do that over here. We just need to go back to doing what we used to do: Make the best product. The first step is to stop being complacent and wake up to the fact that right now somebody else is beating you at that game, fair and square.

Cleaning up the nation

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A remarkable thing happened at precisely 7:47 p.m. yesterday, as I was driving home from work and "tuning in the shine on the light night dial."

A local radio station played Elvis Costello‘s indictment of the sterile radio industry, "Radio Radio." You may have noted previously that I have a certain affinity for this song, as I do for the work of Declan MacManus in general.

Anyway, it was a bit of a milestone. The new WXRY, 99.3 — first recommended to me by one of my children — is doing a very creditable job of living up to its stated mission as an "independent alternative station," to "make radio special again." The management says it believes that the following principles "are essential for a great radio station:"

  • Intelligent presentation, passion and respect for the music
  • No limits on the number of songs we play
  • Support local music
  • Treat listeners with respect
  • Intense community involvement
  • The courage to be different
  • Avoid the trap of playing the same songs 7 or 8 times a day

That’s from the Web site. On the air, it also promotes itself as a station that doesn’t run "adult entertainment" ads that send you lunging for the dial when you have your kids in the car with you.

I like that. I don’t like the fact that sometimes it’s a little hard to get the station without static, and I can’t say I like everything they play, but it’s worth checking out — you know, for when you’re driving in the car and it’s not safe to be reading the newspaper.

Jumping the gun

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The sides in the culture war that is smothering America’s judicial selection process couldn’t wait to get started fighting over the nomination of Samuel Alito. The sooner you attack, the sooner the other side attacks back, the sooner everybody gets really ticked off, and the more money you can raise, so you can pay your advocacy group’s staff, so you can keep on attacking, so … well, you getAlito2_1 the idea.

Anyway, the prize for being the first out of the gate this time — judging by nothing more reliable than my e-mail — was the ever-feisty People for the American Way. President Bush announced his new nomination at 8 a.m. The "American Way" folks couldn’t wait that long. My first release from them came in at 7:58. Either that, or 6:58. (I’m not sure whether my e-mail had switched over to standard time yet, since my desktop didn’t ask my permission to make that move until a couple of hours later.)

Anyway, the release proclaimed, in all capitals,

BUSH PUTS DEMANDS OF FAR-RIGHT ABOVE INTERESTS OF AMERICANS WITH HIGH COURT NOMINATION OF RIGHT-WING ACTIVIST ALITO

No point in throat-clearing or small talk. Might as well get to screaming right off the bat.

The same group weighed in again a couple of hours later. It wasn’t until a few minutes after that that the second party was heard from. At 10:04, Jim DeMint declared that:

Judge Alito is one of the most respected judges in America. His constitutional credentials are unquestionable and his judicial philosophy is verifiable…. In 1990, Judge Alito was unanimously confirmed by a Democrat-controlled Senate because he commanded respect across party lines. Now that he has been nominated to the Supreme Court, I hope Democrats will resist the temptation to obstruct the process and deny him an up-or-down vote. Judge Alito is a dignified man and he deserves a dignified process. He deserves a fair hearing and a fair vote. People in South Carolina and across the nation want a judge who will carefully listen to the arguments in each case and make thoughtful decisions. Americans want a judge who will strictly interpret the law, not legislate from the bench. We have a critical confirmation process ahead of us and I am confident Judge Alito will clearly demonstrate his qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court.

Then, at 11:30 came a piece headlined:

Christian Coalition of America Praises the Nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court.

It went on to quote CCA President Roberta Combs as saying, "President Bush has hit a homerun with this nomination."

Then, at 12:02, The American Civil Liberties Union got the opposition back up on the scoreboard with one headlined, "ACLU Urges Senate to Explore Supreme Court Nominee Alito’s Record on Reproductive Rights, First Amendment." On that side of the Kulturkampf, "reproductive rights" is seen as rolling off the tongue more smoothly than the simpler "abortion." Don’t ask me to explain.

Being a moderate, Lindsey Graham didn’t hit me with a release until 1:27 p.m. (He said that John Roberts hit a home run. But since I have yet to see instant replays on either of these taters, I’m waiting until the official score is posted.) But he made up for his tardiness at 5:58 with a breathless anouncement that the senator would be meeting with Mr. Alito on Tuesday.

And that’s just the start. There’s plenty of action to come, sports fans.

Sunday, Oct. 30 column

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Profiles in (incremental) courage
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
SEVEN U.S. senators tried to inject a little sanity into the federal budget last week. We can take pride in the fact that two of them were from South Carolina.
    Aside from Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint, the group of Republicans included John McCain of Katrinacost_2 Arizona, John Ensign of Nevada, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John Sununu of New Hampshire.
    Their proposals don’t go nearly far enough. But the sad truth is that by Washington standards, the initiative by these seven counts as a really bold move.
    They would:

  • Freeze cost-of-living pay raises for federal employees (including Congress), except those in the military and law enforcement.
  • Delay implementation of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, set to begin in 2006. Lower-income folks would still get $1,200 to help pay for medicine, while upper brackets would pay higher Medicare premiums a year earlier than planned.
  • Eliminate $24 billion worth of earmarked pork projects in the recent $286 billion highway bill.
  • Cut discretionary — that is, non-entitlement — spending by 5 percent across the board, exempting only national security.

    Fine, as far as it goes. But consider:

  • This is billed as a way to pay for Katrina relief. It would free up $125 billion. But with a deficit of $318.62 billion in fiscal 2005, and a bigger deficit projected in the year just begun, these moves would be inadequate if we didn’t spend a dime on disaster aid.
  • Folks in Washington were actually celebrating the fact that the deficit was only $318.62 billion. It was expected to be higher. But it’s still the third-highest deficit in history, though dwarfed by the $412.85 billion shortfall in 2004. Another South Carolinian, Democratic Rep. John Spratt, noted that the Bush administration had once predicted a $269 billion surplus for 2005. As he told The Washington Post, that means 2005 turned out “$588 billion worse than the Bush administration projected when it sent up its first budget in 2001.”
  • The new drug benefit should not be merely delayed. It should be thrown out. The original cost projection of $400 billion over 10 years has risen to more than $720 billion. The legislation deliberately avoided obvious steps to lower drug prices, even forbidding the government to use its purchasing clout to force down costs. Kicking this can down the road doesn’t solve the problem.
  • Speaking of can-kicking: Baby boomers will soon start retiring in droves. And nothing has been done yet to pay for their Social Security and Medicare.
  • While federal employees still serving their country would lose raises, those who have retired from federal service will get a 4.1 percent increase in their pension checks starting in January. Nothing against retirees, but this is the biggest cost-of-living increase in 15 years. Is this the time for it?
  • About 48 million Social Security recipients will also get a 4.1 percent increase in the coming year — the biggest since 1991. What with higher energy costs, I doubt that many will be taking luxury cruises on an average hike of $39 a month. Still, do you expect a pay raise of 4.1 percent in the coming year? I don’t, and I don’t think I’m in the minority.
  • Any across-the-board cut — a favorite remedy on the state level in South Carolina — is a cop-out. It avoids tough decisions, and hurts efficient, vital functions of government just as badly as wasteful programs that should be eliminated entirely. If senators can exempt national security (which they should), they can go further and specify what gets cut and what doesn’t elsewhere.
  • Rethinking tax cuts — some of them, anyway (such as $70 billion in new ones proposed in the 2006 budget) — should at least be on the table. Republicans believe religiously that they are necessary to prosperity. I’m an agnostic on this point. It makes sense that some tax cuts would give a kick to the economy. Of course, so can federal spending. Maybe that’s why the GOP has pursued both courses so zealously since gaining control of the political branches. But I can’t believe all tax cuts are created equal in terms of their salutary economic effect. To refuse to reconsider any of them is to be blinded by ideology.

    I don’t expect any of my concerns to gain serious traction on the Hill. The modest proposals put forth by the sensible seven were, of course, immediately assailed by Democrats. Our own Rep. Jim Clyburn complained that these cuts would be unfair to poor and middle-class citizens.
    But Democrats always say things like that. What’s more relevant is what Republicans do, since they’re running the show. And what they’ve done is cut taxes while presiding over the biggest expansion of the federal government (not counting the military, which should have expanded) since Lyndon Johnson. Remember the huge intrusion into state and local affairs called No Child Left Behind? The latest farm bill? The $223 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska (merely a symbol of billions in spending on unnecessary asphalt)?
    Speaking of LBJ — we’re at war, folks. Everybody, rich and poor, should be giving up something Katrinacost2_2 to help us win it. Our volunteer military is doing its part, but almost no one else is.
    As for Katrina relief, the Republican leadership is talking about maybe cutting $50 billion or so — an absurdity in times when we consider deficits of over six times that worthy of applause.
    So what Sens. Graham and DeMint and five others are talking about deserves our praise and encouragement. It might not go far enough, but at least they want to do away with the Alaska bridge. That’s a start.

The Terrier and the Jackal

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I found this very interesting, and thought I’d pass it on since only Agence France-Presse has reported it, and from the searches I’ve done of major media databases, nobody picked it up. It’s about Detlev Mehlis, the German prosecutor leading the United Nation’s investigation of Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri’s murder:

    A 25-year veteran at the
Berlin public prosecutor’s office, Mehlis launched an apparently
hopeless manhunt against now convicted terrorist mastermind Ilich

Ramírez Sánchez, known as Carlos the Jackal, two decades ago.
    After
receiving a tip that the wanted fugitive was living in a villa in
Damascus, Mehlis launched a relentless campaign it see him extradited,
eventually wearing down the Syrian leadership to abandon their guest.
    Carlos was forced to leave the country and was finally captured by French agents in Sudan in 1994.

That’s quite an item to have on one’s resume, and it helps to explain why this guy has managed the Mehlis_3stunning feat of taking this assassination right to Bashar Assad’s doorstep. He’s solved international puzzles before. In fact, the AFP piece quotes a colleague who told Die Welt that the investigator, shown at left with Kofi Annan, is "like a terrier that does not let go once he has sunk his teeth into something."

And apparently he’s gotten tough with Syria before. No wonder Herr Mehlis walks around with a football team-sized security detail.

It does strike me as odd (if AFP is right) that no one else has seized on this detail, given the world’s longtime fascination with Carlos (an obsession of which I’m acutely aware at the moment because I’ve been reading The Bourne Identity, which unlike the movie features
Ramírez Sánchez as a crucial character). The closest thing I’ve found to it anywhere else was this passage from The New York Times:

… recently he prosecuted the case of Johannes Weinrich, the top aide to the imprisoned terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. Mr. Weinrich was acquitted in August 2004 for lack of evidence.

OK, so he doesn’t bat 1.000. But he apparently has run around the bases a few times. He really seems to know what he’s doing. The question now is, what are the UN, France and the United States going to do about it?

The dark beast of American politics

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I was particularly struck by this passage in Cal Thomas’ column on today’s op-ed page:

If Harriet Miers is “pro-life” and if she believes, as has been reported, that aborting a pre-born child is the taking of an innocent human life, why should she not be expected to favor overturning Roe v. Wade if the opportunity presents itself? Not to do so would be hypocritical.

I’ve got to disagree with Mr. Thomas’ rather narrow view on this matter. If she is confirmed, she should not help overturn Roe v. Wade because she has personal, religious objections to abortion.

No, she should help overturn Roe v. Wade because it was a bad decision, based upon faulty reasoning. Moreover, I would like to see the court overturn it because it has perverted not only the constitutional processes created by the Framers for selecting judges, but it has distorted our entire political world to a painfully destructive degree.

The ruling was based upon the fanciful creation, in the earlier Griswold v. Connecticut, of a right to privacy. It seems there was this penumbra — a shadow that had been lurking in the Constitution for almost two centuries without anyone noticing it. And yet this half-shadow was so sharply defined, it turns out, that it overrode whatever the political will of the people of the various states might be with regard to first birth control, then abortion.

Since then, the shadow has extended — like the darkness coming out of Mordor to overcome Tolkien’s Middle Earth — to cover every aspect of our politics today. It’s not just THE subtext of practically every question asked of judicial nominees, it’s THE unresolved conflict in the nation’s political subconscious.

Just as confirmation hearings have become all about abortion, presidential campaigns have become — among the bitterest partisans — mostly about abortion. That one issue, the emotional center of which underlies so many others (assisted suicide, stem cells, removal of feeding tubes, etc.), has become perhaps the chief determinant of whether people identify themselves as Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. You can be for the war in Iraq (or against it) whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, but it’s awfully hard, if not impossible, to get nominated if you’re not on your party’s side on abortion.

And which side they have chosen determines whether they think Roe v. Wade should be overturned or not. But you know, you would think both sides would want to see it gone. The partisans are spoiling for a fight, so why not have a real fight, according to the rules of American politics? This is about the deepest values each of us hold, and as citizens we should be allowed to decide the issue’s outcome by electing lawmakers who reflect our values — lawmakers who are not prohibited by the courts from making this most political of decisions.

And then we can go back to choosing justices based upon their knowledge of and faithfulness to the law, rather than playing these bitter guessing games, doing anything and everything we can to try to divine how they will rule on this one thing.

I know the partisans aren’t sick of the current state of affairs the way I am, but I don’t see why they’re not. From where I sit, it appears that this issue is eating them away, from the inside out. And it’s doing the same thing to the country.

So it has come to this…

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You can read, or see video, of all the devastation — the flood waters, the bodies in the streets. You can see the refugees from the path of the storm, right in your own community. You can participate in debates about whether New Orleans should be rebuilt, and if so, how. But sometimes it’s the little things — the truly insignificant things, really — that tell you just how far gone a once-vibrant, unique city has gone compared to what it was.

To many people, the beverage associated with New Orleans is bourbon. But I haven’t been there since I lived there in junior high school, so I have a different association. To me, New Orleans is about sitting in front of the Cafe Du Monde and drinking coffee with chicory while looking out across Jackson Square. In fact, since about a year or so ago, when I suddenly realized I could get it over the Internet, that’s what I’ve drinking at home. I’ve been wondering whether I’ll have to give it up, but that’s seemed hardly worth talking about in light of all the real suffering out there.

(Cafe Du Monde already had nostalgic associations for me when I first discovered it at that young age. That’s because the cafe itself — or something that looked just like it — was used in the logo of French Market brand coffee, which my grandfather had sold when I was even younger. It meant a lot to me to be sitting in the actual place in the picture.)

But this morning, I heard this report on NPR. To my shock, an actual denizen of the city — a columnist at the Times-Picayune — stated on coast-to-coast radio that the four hours each day that Starbucks is open is "the best four hours of the day." The point of his commentary was to portray the extent to which his city is no longer the home that it was. Nothing could have communicated that idea more completely to me than that one detail — that someone actually OF that city, where distinctive coffee is a part of the community’s character, could speak so wistfully of the Wal-Mart of java. Hey, I’ve been known to drink Starbucks myself — even to go out of my way to get some, knowing that I have the true stuff at home. I suspect that, to paraphrase an old Mike Myers line, they put an addictive chemical in it that makes you crave it fortnightly.

But I don’t live and work in New Orleans. When someone who does is reduced to standing outside McCoffee waiting for it to open each day, you have to wonder whether the place will ever be anything like what it was, ever again.

Fight or flee? Neither, actually, old boy.

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Imagine this in Andy Rooney’s voice, only with an edge…

Didja ever have one of those days when you were utterly convinced that those experts out there are right, that evolution has not prepared us in any way for modern life — especially of the white-collar variety? A day when you reach the realization that Ron Livingston‘s character did in "Office Space" — that Man was not meant to sit in cubicles (or offices) doing TPS reports?

I mean, our bodies — and particularly our central nervous systems — were just not made for responding to stress by smiling and being being all civilized and diplomatic and constructive and filling out the proper forms. We’re hard-wired to fight or flee, and all the rules nowadays say we can’t do either.

Anyway, while most days I love my job and can honestly say that I wouldn’t trade it for any other (except maybe directing movies, and I don’t think that’s realistic at this point), there are days — and I’m not saying this is one of them, nor am I saying it isn’t — when I wish I were something like a soldier, or a boxer. Days when instead of saying, "Yes, sir, well, I’m sorry you feel that way about that column/editorial/blog item," you want, on an atavistic level, to just go out and take out the objective (or at least blow something up), or kick some butt.

Of course, neither of those options is any more realistic than my chances of directing. The Army wouldn’t take me even when I was young and relatively fit. As for boxing — well, I took up kickboxing several years ago, when I was 47, and in my very first (and last) sparring match, my opponent broke four of my ribs in the first round. I still went the full three rounds, even after he dropped me to one knee by hitting me again in the very spot where my ribs were broken. That one hurt. (I am proud of having gone the distance, even though it was only three rounds. Conversely, my wife sees it as final proof, as though she needed any more, that I am an idiot. Which isn’t my fault, since, speaking of evolution, my brain still hasn’t fully developed.) Basically, this guy didn’t get the idea of sparring; he seemed to think it was a real fight. Combine that with my inability to think defensively (as in, keeping my stupid elbows down), and I was in trouble.

So really, I’m pretty lucky that I do have a weenie job such as editorial page editor. Especially since someone just came in while I was writing this and gave me some good news that made this day a lot better. So I guess I’ll wait until another time to strip off my clothes and go running through the savanna — or the would-be Green Diamond project — looking to kill a wildebeest with a rock. For now, blogging is about as close as I’ll get to that.

Perception or reality?

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Some additional thoughts I didn’t have room for in today’s column. In fact, these thoughts were actually central to the original idea for the column, but I ended up going in another direction:

A related issue: I’m sick of seeing perception spoken of as though it were substantial. If a poll shows that 57 percent of the country now believes a candidates’ stands on issues should be fair game for questioning (although they didn’t believe so in July, as if such fundamental principles were as mutable as the weather), that does NOT mean that they are fair game for questioning; it means 57 percent of the public didn’t (as of last week, when the poll was conducted) understand what is appropriate and what is not.

I realize that is likely to set off the small-D democrats out there, but the fact is that this country was established as a republic, not a pure democracy, for very good reasons. It wasn’t because those who are elected to represent us are necessarily smarter or better than the rest of us (no one who has spent as much time as I have over at the State House could believe that). It’s that the business of running a government is complicated, and requires more study and attention than the average citizen can devote to it in order to shape sound policy. You can take that same average citizen, and put him in the seat of an elected representative, and if he does the job he’s supposed to do, he will know things that the people who sent him there don’t know, no matter how smart they are. Why? Because they’ve got lives to lead, and he is the one they have delegated to study the issues more closely than they have time to do.

(This is why, for instance, some of the most conscientious Democrats in the Congress, such as Sens. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, are far more committed to sticking it out in Iraq than many of the folks who voted for them. They have done their jobs, and gained expertise in international affairs, and therefore fully understand how disastrous it would be for us to pull out now.)

The Senate, unlike the House, is particularly intended to be shielded from the momentary whims of public opinion — of which this case, in which you have the public exhibiting entirely different sets of values from July to September, is a perfect example. (This is why senators are elected every six years instead of two, and also why they were originally not popularly elected at all, but appointed by legislatures.) And one of the things that senators who take their jobs seriously ought to know is that the suitability of Supreme Court nominees should be based upon their legal credentials, not their personal political opinions. But a weird thing apparently happens in the world of politics: If the president of the opposite party is seen as too popular to challenge, senators tend to toe the line in terms of the propriety of the questions they ask during confirmation hearings. And if the president’s approval rating is in the toilet, one is free to quiz them about anything and everything. To some people (including, according to that poll, a majority of the electorate as of last week), this makes perfect sense. But to the nonpartisan mind, it makes none.

More on perception versus reality: There seems little question that President Bush failed to exhibit the leadership qualities that we deserve in the first days after Katrina hit (although I give him credit for at least trying to hit the right notes since then). I mean, who the expletive cares about Trent Lott’s porch when there are poor folks floating dead in the streets of New Orleans? The answer to that is, the president. And that says some pretty awful things about his suitability as a leader.

But in a larger sense, did the federal government as a whole fail in its job? Well, yes, in the sense that what it did was inadequate to the unbelievably huge task before it. But given the resources (which thanks to budget-cutting, WERE inadequate) and information available to it at the time, was the effort to meet that challenge reasonable?

I don’t know. I realize that makes me sound like an idiot to people who’ve been watching 24/7 news coverage over the last week or so — something I have neither the time or inclination to do. But that’s precisely where my uncertainty comes in. There’s something about that 24/7 news coverage that can shape perception regardless of reality. Decent human beings (with too much time on their hands) who sit and watch hours of human suffering, and then take a lunch break and come back to the tube, say "Oh my God — those people still haven’t been helped yet?" Therefore relief efforts don’t meet their expectations.

But are those expectations realistic? That’s what I don’t know. I’ve heard more than one person who has been involved in such aid operations say that deploying assets within three days of their being requested is actually something of a logistical coup.

I believe there were screw-ups — as there always are in something this big (study the mistakes made on D-Day, or the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest, if you want to see governmental action at its most FUBAR). But was it more fouled up than we should expect? I don’t know, and that’s why investigations into what happened are worthwhile — after we deal with the more immediate problems.

Finally, I want to pin some more blame on the media in general — not just the TV cowboys who so often draw my ire. I’m including the press. Back in 1996, I reviewed a book by James Fallows called BREAKING THE NEWS: How the Media Undermine American Democracy. He wrote that "Step by step, mainstream journalism has fallen into the habit of portraying public life as a race to the bottom, in which one group of conniving, insincere politicians ceaselessly tries to outmaneuver another." More: "By choosing to present public life as a contest among scheming political leaders, all of whom the public should view with suspicion, the news media helps bring about that very result."

It’s a malignant application of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to American public life. Mr. Fallows said journalists tend lazily to cast every development in the news in terms of how it affects electoral politics. What may need to be reported are complicated facts that give readers and viewers the perspective they need to understand what happened. But that’s hard to do, whereas talking about the political implications is easy because journalists — particularly Washington journalists — live and breathe that stuff.

An example from the past week: When the president decided to name John Roberts as Chief Justice to replace William Rehnquist, the very first question that occurred to me (as a nonexpert on the subject) was, is this kosher? Has this happened before? Has the president ever named a rookie — one who hasn’t even pitched his first game in the majors, and for that matter doesn’t have much experience in the minors — to the top of the heap, over the heads of more experienced jurists?

I was very disappointed not to find the answer to that question in the first few sources I turned to — including The New York Times, which I usually trust to give me the perspective I seek on such matters. What I did find, however, was multiple references to the political implications of Mr. Bush’s declining popularity, and what that meant in terms of the reception his nominees were bound to get — which is what prompted me to write today’s column to begin with.

(By the way, it turns out I was all wet suspecting there was something unusual about a non-justice being named chief justice. Few of the 16 chief justices of the United States were actually on the court before their elevation.)

Out amongst ’em

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    Just a few more minutes — a precious few — and the mob will be sufficiently distracted by their bread and circuses that I can make my escape. Until then, I’m trapped…

Forgive me, but this situation brings out the very worst, most prejudiced, least tolerant elements of my character.

I was out amongst ’em today. By "’em," I choose a semi-articulate means of expressing my strong sense of "otherness" when compared to a certain very broad swath of the folk of our land.

I’m talking about football fans. Yes, yes, I know, many football fans are otherwise good and decent people in whom I would find many fine and admirable qualities. Many of them are friends of mine. (But we bigots always say that, don’t we?) But when they are in fan mode, I find them intolerable.

I suppose this is to some extent, like all prejudices, an irrational response. I have an excuse, though. I think I’m suffering from a mild form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Football has been very, very bad to me.

I haven’t been a football fan myself since 1969, when that snotty Joe Namath led the Jets to beat my team, the Baltimore Colts, in a drastic distortion of the natural order. I had waited what had seemed like forever (a year or two is like forever at that age) for Johnny Unitas and company to prevail over the hated Packers, and they finally had. That meant they had achieved their rightful place as the best team in the world. Sure, there was that mere formality of a post-season exhibition against the AFL, but everyone knew that the AFL was profoundly inferior to the NFL, so it hardly counted, right?

What that stunning experience taught me was that football is an unforgivably capricious sport. Too much rides on the uncontrollable flukes of a single game. In baseball, as in life, you’ve got to be good over the long haul to achieve the pennant. That builds character. In football — because the game is so insanely harsh upon its practitioners’ bodies — there are so few games that every single one is all-important. You can’t afford to lose a single one, if you want to be the champs. Such inflated stakes make each game ridiculously overimportant to fans. They lose all sense of proportion, which is very off-putting.

But I didn’t really learn to hate the game until I came to work at The State, and spent my first year here being the editor in charge on Saturdays. You can see where this is going, can’t you? It seemed that the sadists over in the Roundhouse had contrived to schedule every single home game that year to begin shortly after the time I had to be at work — meaning that there was no way I could get to work in less than an hour and a half. You’ll recall that back then, the newspaper offices were located in the very shadow of the Grid Temple. We’re a little farther away now, but not enough so to make it easy to get in and out on a game day. Oh, excuse me, isn’t that supposed to be capitalized — Game Day?

I would travel around and around a circle with a five-mile radius centered upon Williams-Brice, probing for weaknesses in the wall of flag-bedecked vehicles, looking for a way in to work, always frustrated. Up Bluff or Shop road? No. Around Beltline to Rosewood and back in? No. A frontal assault up Assembly? That was as mad as Pickett’s Charge. Through Olympia? Are you kidding?

By the time I was finally at the office, I was foaming at the mouth. Seriously, I wasn’t fit to talk to for hours, I was filled with such hostility for every single fan (you know the word is short for "fanatic," don’t you?) out there. I was in such a degraded, paranoid state of mind that I actually believed (temporarily) that they had all conspired to cause me this frustration intentionally (they couldn’t possibly be enjoying that gridlock themselves, so there HAD to be a nefarious motive somewhere). My embarrassing discourses on the subject to fellow employees were as profane as they were unwelcome. I think the worst day was the one when I was almost arrested by a Highway Patrolman who refused to let me up Key Road to The State‘s parking lot when I had finally worked my way to within 100 yards of it — an obstinacy on his part to which I responded with a distinct edge of barely-contained rage.

This afternoon, I had to go out a little after 1 p.m., and had to pass twice through the heart of the fan encampment. Folks were already tailgating. There was no yardarm in sight, but I’m quite certain the sun wouldn’t have been over it if there had been, and these folks were already getting a six-hour jump on the liquoring-up process. (They couldn’t really like football, if they need that much anesthetic before a game.) This shouldn’t have bothered me, but I couldn’t stop thinking thoughts such as these: This is Thursday, a workday. I’ve got more work waiting for me back at the office than I can get done by the weekend, and there’s a war going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Gulf Coast from Texas to Alabama has just been essentially wiped off the map, the price of fuel has jumped practically 50 percent in a matter of days, and these people can’t think of anything better to do with their time.

But they’re not the problem. It’s me. My response is contemptibly irrational. I’m only harming myself. Case in point: I’ve been ranting about this so long, I’ve almost lost my window of opportunity to escape before the fair-weather types start slipping out at halftime and clogging Shop Road.

Gotta go. Bye. I’ll try to be more civil and tolerant of my fellow humans in my next posting. But I’m not promising anything.

July 22 column, with links

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Folks in high office keep getting
younger — in more ways than one
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
    I’M NOT USUALLY inclined to help partisans and ideologues, but the Democrats and “liberal groups” who yearn to stop President Bush’s choice for the Supreme Court obviously aren’t trying very hard.
    John Glover Roberts Jr. is flawed in a way that is so obvious, so irrefutable, that the seven Democrats in the “Gang of 14” should have no trouble citing this failing as an “extraordinary circumstance” that frees them from their promise not to filibuster:
    He’s too young.
    I don’t mean “too young in that he would be in a position to steer the court in a conservative direction for a generation.” Mr. Bush’s political opponents would mean it that way, but I don’t care about any of that “liberal vs. conservative” mumbo-jumbo. I mean he’s just plain too young. This isRoberts  not opinion. It is based upon an indisputably objective standard, to wit:
    At 50, he is the first person nominated to the Supreme Court in my lifetime who is younger than I am.
    Obviously, this is an intolerable situation, and those inclined toward intolerance of all things Bush should seize it with both hands (especially since I doubt they’ll find any other good excuses to oppose him).
    Now, let me help out the Republicans and “conservative groups” that are going to support this mere pup no matter what their opponents say, do or dig up:
    I’m being facetious.
    I spell that out — obvious as it may be to you, dear reader — because the ideologues of the right are as utterly lacking in a sense of irony as their counterparts on the left. And I get enough sputtering e-mail as things stand.
    I will now confuse everyone by not only getting serious, but changing the subject entirely.
    My purpose is not to pass judgment on that callow youth the president introduced Tuesday night (note to “conservatives” —being facetious again there).
    The thing is, my own shock at his youth reminds me of an earlier experience, one that has more substantial implications right here at home in South Carolina.
    In 1994, my first year on this newspaper’s editorial board, we interviewed David Beasley, who was seeking our endorsement (which he didn’t get) for governor.
    At one point, the late Bill Rone asked the candidate of the Christian Right about his reputed past Sc_senate_beasley as a Good-Time Charlie.
    Mr. Beasley looked at him with an expression of sincere, chastened, candid innocence and said, “Yessir, I’ve had good times….” I have never before or since seen anyone seeking public office look quite so much like a once-wayward cherub who was humbly grateful to be back in the heavenly fold. It was not the sort of thing that your everyday man of the world can carry off.
    So as the meeting was breaking up I had to ask: How old are you, anyway? He told me, I nodded, and said wonderingly, “You’re the first gubernatorial candidate I’ve ever interviewed who was younger than I am.”
    I didn’t attach all that much importance to it at the time. Yes, I did detect a certain “What, me worry?” callowness in the candidate, a lack of gravitas that always made it hard for me to take him as seriously as one would like to take a governor of one’s state. But my main thought was that I was getting older, and I might as well get used to this sort of thing.
    And boy, was I right.
    Every governor we’ve had since that day has been younger than I. Jim Hodges didn’t look like it, but it’s true.
    Mr. Hodges, who had been a competent and even admirable legislator, regressed somehow from the moment he began to seek the state’s highest office. He allowed himself to be led by the nose by a self-deluding, 34-year-old political consultant whose awful advice helped him become, like Mr. Hodgeslose Beasley, a one-termer.
    Mark Sanford seems a little older than his two immediate predecessors. He seems more like, say, a graduate student. But his ideas, and his ability to translate them into policy, seem stuck in that stage of development. However good some of them are (and however bad others are), they seem unable to find their way out of the seminar.
    It’s not really a matter of age. Mr. Sanford was five years older than Fritz Hollings was when he became governor, and Mr. Hollings accomplished a lot.
    My concern has more to do with certain attributes we tend to associate with age, and which have been lacking in South Carolina. Our last few governors haven’t been terribly accomplished, either at the time of their election or at the time of their departure.
    Mr. Sanford has yet to depart, but he hasn’t broken the string yet, and his resume in 2002 — six years in Congress with a singular lack of achievements — is consistent with the trend. (Mr. Hodges Sanford_budget had more to show when he ran, but you wouldn’t have known it watching him as governor.)
    Not just to pick on these three, the same can be said of almost everyone who’s sought the office during this time — Joe Riley, who failed to be nominated in 1994, being the noteworthy exception.
    And South Carolina needs more than that. It needs someone who can get things done, because we’ve got a lot that needs doing. Yet the kinds of accomplished men and women who might be able to lead us where we need to go just don’t seek public office. Perhaps it’s that their dignity won’t allow them to run that often degrading gantlet. Perhaps it’s something else.
    But whatever it is, it continues to hold our state back.

Shame we must not forget

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This week we mark the 10th anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, and I wonder what we have learned about evil and how we should respond to it. We’ve learned a lot of details about what happened, from testimony before the war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. We know that some of the monsters responsible for it, such as General Ratko Mladic himself, are still at large.

But then, he’s not the only one responsible, is he? How about all the nations that stood by and let it happen, even though Srebrenica had been declared a safe haven by the United Nations, supposedly under the protection of UN (specifically, Dutch) troops. I don’t really get a say in what monsters Srebrenica1 choose to do. But all of us who live in liberal democracies have a say in whether our nations act when they have the power to do so.

The awful thing is, Western democracies have tended to wait until the worst has already happened before acting. Consider the last part of The Economist‘s reflection on the subject last week:

Visiting the cemetery in September 2003, Bill Clinton also gave a remarkably blunt, and politically astute, analysis of the political effects of the massacre. "Srebrenica", he said, "was the beginning of the end of genocide in Europe. It enabled me to secure NATO support for the bombing that led to…peace." In other words, without Srebrenica, America could not have won the support of its European allies for a sharp switch to a war-fighting (and thus war-ending) strategy in Bosnia.

On this reading, at least, Srebrenica was a sort of genocide to end all genocides (in one part of the world, anyway). It was also a necessary prerequisite to the dropping of the "bombs for peace" — which, by triggering a final, vast wave of forced population movement, left Bosnia’s military balance, and above all its ethnic balance, in a state acceptable to the region’s power-brokers.

For the bereaved mothers and widows gathering at the cemetery this week, that surely raises a hard question: was the shock of a massacre the only thing that could make the western powers change policy, and settle their own differences? Was there no other way?

Was it really necessary for 8,000 men and boys to be murdered in cold blood right under the noses of the troops of advanced Western nations for civilization to rouse itself from its torpor and confront evil? And if so, how long does that inoculation against fecklessness and indifference last? Must we keep on getting booster shots — in Rwanda, in the Sudan, and yes, in New York and Washington on Srebrenica2 9/11 for us to be willing to confront the menace. And how long does each of those updates last? Seldom long enough.

A generational train wreck

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I was struck, and by no means for the first time, by a certain thought when I read the piece by Rosa Brooks on our op-ed page today.

If you’ll recall, she fretted about what a headache it is for kids to have summer vacations from school because,

Today, the overwhelming majority of parents work full time outside the home. That includes most mothers: Women with children are just about as likely to be in the labor force as women without children.

What occurred to me was not my usual defense of summer as a time sacred to children and essential to their ability to learn to be human beings. Nor did I feel compelled to quibble with Ms. Brooks’ advocacy for the kinds of labor laws and benefits that have helped push the French and German economies into sufficient distress as to threaten those countries’ leaders’ political futures.

In fact, I don’t wish to quibble with her at all. I just want to share an idle thought. It’s a small thought, and certainly not an original one, and there’s never really been enough to it to develop into a column (or so I thought, but I do seem to be dragging things out rather well at the moment). And yet it is an observation that goes to root causes of why my generation has lived the sort of adulthood it has lived.

It is this: Is it not passing strange that our generation — the largest, most congested mass of humanity in our nation’s history — chose the very moment that we were all entering the workforce to decide that henceforth, it would be de rigueur that women work outside the home? I’m no economist, but I did get far enough in school to cover the concept of supply and demand. And I just have to ask, how smart was it — when the competition for jobs already would be fiercer than anything our fathers knew, just because there were so many of us — that we decided to initiate a fundamental change in society’s structure that would have the effect of doubling the already huge number of young people clawing for a finite number of jobs?

Did this buyer’s market for labor not empower those very same wicked large corporations that Ms. Brooks frets about to pay all of us less than they would otherwise have to do? And did this not in turn force both moms and dads to work if they wanted to achieve middle-class financial security, thereby turning what had been a liberation for women into a form of wage slavery?

Maybe not. Maybe the huge source of labor led to a sufficient expansion of the economy that we all became actually wealthier than our parents. And maybe pigs have wings. My life hasn’t felt like that, and when I look around at all the other people treading hard to keep their heads above water, or at least maintain their lifestyles, I don’t think their lives have felt like that, either.

This isn’t an anti-feminist screed. When I write one of those, I’ll tell you so. And I’m not trying to take issue with any fellow S.C. bloggers.

Personally, I firmly believe the workplaces I have known have been more pleasant and humane places thanks to the presence of women — as peers, as subordinates and as bosses. And except for when I was seeking my first job out of college in 1975 and had one prospective employer tell me he couldn’t consider me because he was under orders to hire a woman (which may have been a bunch of bull anyway), I am unaware of any time that competition from women has held back my career.

Still, this has always struck me as really ironic, and quite a trick that a generation has played on itself.