Category Archives: Kulturkampf

Hyde Park is a small town, too (according to Chicago)

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A reader gave me a heads-up to a piece in the Chicago Tribune in which a supporter of Barack Obama rebuts Sarah Palin by insisting that the Democrat is from a small town, too. A sample:

We know about the power of faith. In Hyde Park we brave the bitter winds to gather in Rockefeller Chapel on Thanksgiving morning. We are welcomed by African drums; we are blessed by rabbis, priests and preachers; then we are sent home to our holiday feasts by the smell of burning sage offered by Indian tribal leaders.

You know, I can really dig this, because when I was growing up, Bennettsville was just like that!…

No, no, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t make fun… not even when people seem to be going out of their way to tempt me… And earnestness, particularly of the "politically correct" variety, can be so wickedly tempting. (And I HATE that trite phrase, "politically correct." But how else do you describe something that so painstakingly, self-righteously invokes the concept, like, "look at me; I’m doing my best to be a cliche…")

Oh, and please, please, you who are earnest and self-righteous — PLEASE don’t try to explain this to me. I get it; what is offensive to me is when somebody thinks I DON’T get it, and goes to such lengths as this to overexplain to me the virtues of "multiculturalism." I got it when I was in the first grade, I promise — probably earlier. We’re all God’s children, regardless of race, color or creed — even the irony-deprived among us. But no one with a sense of humor can see it ladled on that thick and not crack up.

And don’t worry, this writer doesn’t expect you to get the point from that excerpt above; for those of you just too clueless to get it, she drops it on you like an anvil in the last graf:

The people of rural America do not have a monopoly on these principles. And they are not the only Americans who count….

Ow! Got … to… have… release…. "So a preacher, a priest and a rabbi walk into an herbal tea bar in Hyde Park…"

SORRY, dang; I can’t help it! Get thee behind me…

The Kulturkampf is wearing me out.

‘Fear our Fecundity’

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Families

Years and years ago, way back before immigration was anywhere near the issue it is today (or was last year, anyway; seems like I don’t hear nearly as much about it in this season), I read a piece either in the Atlantic or Harper’s. Written by a Mexican-American, it explored resistance in this country to immigration from south of the border (the "South of the Border" Gene Autry sang about, not the one in Dillon County). I don’t remember whether it was talking about illegals or not, but based on what I do remember from the piece, legality was probably irrelevant.

Anyway, the part I remember went like this: "They fear our fecundity." I remember it because I had to look up the word. I had seen it for years and never been sure of its meaning. Having learned it, I made a note to use it sometime. Having five kids of my own, I thought it might come in handy.

Twins_007It never did. I don’t think I’ve ever used it in the newspaper, and it doesn’t creep into my daily
conversation, even around the twins. (That’s them at the right, by the way, from over the weekend — just in case you haven’t had your full allotment of Cute today. Note the serious expressions — they’re thinking about politics. That’s Baby A on the left, Baby B on the right.)

But the word popped into my head when I saw the photo above. It’s of the McCain and Palin families together. It’s almost like they’re saying to Democrats, Fear our Fecundity…

Here’s a key to the photo, courtesy of The Associated Press:

The families of Republican presidential candidate, Sen., John McCain, R-Ariz., and his running mate, Alaska Gov., Sarah Palin pose for a photograph at the airport in Minneapolis, Minn., after McCain arrived for the Republican National Convention Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008. Left to Right: Doug McCain, Bridgett McCain, Meghan McCain, Sidney McCain, Jack McCain,Jimmy McCain, Cindy McCain, Andy McCain, Sen. John McCain Gov. Sarah Palin, Todd Plain, Bristol Palin, Levi Johnston, Willow Palin, Trig Palin, Piper Palin, Track Palin.

But hold on! Fear not, Dems! Joe Biden can top them without any help from the four Obamas. Do not try to out-fecund us Catholics, baby! Unfortunately, AP did not bother to list all the members of the Biden clan in the caption to this photo…
Biden_fam

What did you think of Sarah Palin’s speech?

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Palinspeak

For my part, not knowing what to expect,
I was impressed. She fought her cornerPalinstand_3
well, if you’ll permit the sports metaphor. If nothing else, she showed she could use a teleprompter more naturally and with greater poise than the guy at the head of the ticket.

She sort of turned my sitcom analogy around. Rather than whipping off her glasses and letting down her hair to reveal the beauty queen, she kept the specs on and unveiled a smart woman, an Earth Mother type from the small-town frontier who is a tough cookie, unintimidated by the condescension of the cosmopolitan types Rudy had mocked so earlier in the evening.

But write in and tell us what y’all thought. I’ll read it in the morning; gotta hit the sack.

Please don’t tell me there are people who think Palin’s daughter is an ‘issue’

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A day or so after John McCain announced his choice of Sarah Palin, sometime over that long weekend, I remarked to someone that her great disadvantage was that she was a blank slate, and the Very First Thing she said — that is, the very first thing anyone focused on — would be blown out of all proportion and define her for the rest of the campaign, if not the rest of her life.

Joe Biden — or Joe Lieberman, or McCain, or anyone we’ve known, or think we’ve known, for years — can say something outrageous, and we’ll set it alongside all the other things we know he’s said or done, and it won’t be a make or break thing (and the reason Joe B. came first to mind is that one of the things we know about ol’ Joe, from long experience, is that he has a penchant for saying things that some regard as outrageous).

Not so with Sarah P. The first thing she says or does that makes an impression — which hasn’t happened yet — will fill up the vacuum in her "conventional wisdom" dossier.

Therefore, the stakes for her speech tonight would be extremely high. And so it should be; we don’t have years to get to know her.

Of course, I reckoned without the idiocy of the 24/7 TV "news" spin machine. It has to have something to masticate EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY, and whatever it’s chewing at a given moment is by its foolish definition THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD, so it couldn’t possibly wait until her speech Wednesday night.

If she had made the mistake of saying sometime since Friday that she doesn’t like the color blue, THAT would be the object of endless, fascinated conjecture, "analysis" and "judgment" by the talking heads: How could she not like blue? What sort of person is this? Everybody likes blue — all Americans, anyway. And what hypocrisy to be running with a Navy man, not liking blue! Or will she now claim, implausibly, that it’s only SKY blue that she dislikes? Watch for campaign releases claiming that she’s always liked NAVY blue…

And so forth. The cable TV talking heads make me think of Ford Prefect’s theory about Earthlings: "If they don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working."

So yesterday — or the day before; I get all confused in weeks that contain holidays — we heard that Sarah Palin’s daughter is pregnant. To which I responded — to myself — Uh-huh. Well, I’m sure that’s been hard for them. And then I continued with my life, waiting for someone to say something that actually had any bearing whatsoever on this young woman’s suitability to be vice president.

But, apparently because her speech wasn’t until tonight, the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter, of all absurd things, was dubbed an "issue" worthy of discussion, and even more implausibly, sufficient grist for snap conclusions as to Sarah Palin’s viability as a candidate. And yet it’s not even anything that I had deemed relevant (OR appropriate) to discuss on the blog, and as y’all know, I don’t have a high standard for such things.

Yes, I know; I should have expected this. Yet I was actually surprised when I picked up newspapers this morning and read that the McCain campaign (which had known about the pregnancy, the husband’s DUI, etc., and didn’t think any more of it than I did) was actually having to COPE with this "issue," that it was causing consternation throughout the GOP convention, yadda-yadda.

Oh, come ON, people! Get a freakin’ life!

Get back to me when you have something of substance to say about this woman…

What’s with the tieless look?

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Obamabiden_2

As I noted earlier, the masculine equivalent of Sarah Palin’s specs and tied-up hair is to wear a coat and tie. The effect in both cases is to project seriousness of purpose.

So what are we to make of the fact that, all of a sudden, the male candidates for president and vice president are, quite deliberately, showing themselves in public without neckties?I don’t mean as a sort of occasional thing for a barbecue, but all the time. And don’t try to tell me this is just happening without somebody thinking about it; campaigns think about everything these days, as Peggy Noonan noted the other day (writing about Obama’s acceptance speech, the last time he was seen wearing a tie).

This has been coming for some time. As far back as 2006, Joe Biden was regularly appearing here in S.C. with a jacket, but no tie… sort of the Paul-McCartney-on-the-cover-of-Abbey-Road look. Here’s proof of that.

Then, I started noticing Obama doing the same. And McCain, too. And Huckabee and even Romney.

Here’s what worries me about this… those of you who are old enough to remember will recall how JFK killed men’s hats. There are some authorities that dispute it, but then there are many who believe Oswald didn’t act alone. Suffice it to say that before JFK, men wore hats. Afterwards, they didn’t.

Obama could do the same with the necktie. Biden and McCain aren’t so much of a threat, because when they go tieless, they just look like they’re been playing with their grandchildren and didn’t want them chewing on their ties. They don’t look natural that way.

But there’s been altogether too much loose talk about Obama’s charisma. No less an authority than Ted Sorensen has sat in my board room and pronounced Obama the rightful heir to Camelot. He’s already known as The One. How long can it be before he’s dubbed The Tieless One? (Note the picture above — while Biden just looks like he’s on his way to play golf, Obama is making that "early-60s, Best-and-Brightest" statement again with the white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up).

So, if the necktie industry, moribund as it is, wants to save itself, it had better do what it can to elect McCain. Because if Obama’s elected, every day will be casual Friday.

Or at least, he would get the "credit." The fact is that, as I have noted twice in recent columns, Gallup has found that only 6 percent of American men wear a tie to work every day. I, of course, am of the 6 percent, and am determined to wear the thing every day until I retire. I mean, I have to now — it’s a statement. Before, it was conformity. Now, it’s a statement of adherence to traditional values and seriousness of purpose. I’ll have you know that I bought on of the last bow ties at Lourie’s — in fact, it may have been the last bow tie they actually sold.

I also still have a Wilson Jack Kramer Autograph wooden tennis racket, although I don’t use it any more. I do use my old persimmon 4 wood, though. When I’m hitting it right, it’s the best club in my bag; the ball flies like a rifle shot. Which reminds me, I’m not working today…
Mccainhuck

Did that mob look familiar?

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Ariail_book

Students of Robert Ariail’s work may note that there’s something really familiar looking about that cartoon criticized on a local feminist blog.

Take a look at the cover of his last book, Ariail! There’s at least one particular character who appears in both. Of course, she appears in a lot of Robert’s cartoons, such as this one and this one and this one. He even has a name for her: He calls her "Auntie Bellum." She was to be a character in a comic strip that Robert and I kicked around a lot back in the 1990s, but never got around to developing (I haven’t given up hope of getting back to it, though).

Here’s how that cover developed: One day in 2001, Robert had another group of women angry at him — Muslim women who maintained that a gag he did about dress codes for pages at the State House (he’d drawn them in burqas) was anti-Islam. I said something like, "You’ve just got everybody on your case lately, don’t you — flag supporters, the governor, Democrats, Republicans, traditional Muslim women…." The drawing arose from that, and then Robert got to thinking that would be a good cover for a book….

You will note that women are not the only people who get really, really mad at Robert.

Today’s puzzler

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In the spirit of Click and Clack, I offer the following conundrum. Consider first this letter to the editor from today’s paper:

Stupid blue laws thwart purchase
    Government is the only source of such stupidity. Or at least with the authority to enforce such ignorance.
    After church, my wife, Mary, and I went to Wal-Mart for a new sports watch for her. She decided on one and told the clerk to ring it up. The clerk said, “I can’t ring it up until 1:30, and it’s only 1:15. Why don’t you shop around and come back in 15 minutes?”
    We wandered around for about 10 minutes and saw folks were checking out with bananas, potato chips and, yes, even beer, but you can’t purchase a watch until 1:30. I said I’ll have a beer while I wait till 1:30 to buy the watch.
    Woe unto you who think government is the answer. When are we going to vote these nitwits out?

Bruce G. Kelly
Columbia

This is an interesting letter on several levels, but the most immediate question that arises is this: Where in the Midlands do you find a jurisdiction where it would be illegal to buy the watch before 1:30, yet legal to buy beer on Sunday?

The simple answer is that there isn’t one. Poor Mr. Kelly would be hard-pressed to find the "nitwits" that he wants to "vote out," since there is no jurisdiction that has made those two decisions that he finds so maddeningly inconsistent.

Give up? I had, but then Warren proposed a potential answer — while there is no one such jurisdiction, this Wal-Mart was in an anomalous location that was both in the city of Columbia and in Lexington County. It’s not a thought that would have immediately occurred to me, but of course there are such places.

My first guess was that we’re talking about the new Wal-Mart on Bush River Road, right next to Malfunction Junction. The map on my wall in the editorial dept. shows it as in Lexington County. It does NOT show it as being in Columbia, but it’s an old map, and I have the advantage of private intelligence in this case: I recently tried to buy beer there on a Sunday, and succeeded. Ipso facto, to wit, etc….

But that’s not where this happened. When Randle, who edits our letters, got back to the office, I asked her to call Mr. Kelly and get to the bottom of the mystery.

The answer: This incident occurred at the Harbison Wal-Mart, which is certainly in Lexington County, and — while I couldn’t find confirmation of the fact on any map readily at hand, the odds are that if it’s in that area and developed, it’s in the city.

Of course, Mr. Kelly still can’t find anyone to vote out of office for creating this situation. Even if he lives in both the city and Lexington County, it’s beyond the power of any local elected official to solve his problem. A Columbia city council member, for instance, might change the beer-sale ordinance, but could do nothing about Lexington’s blue law — and vice versa, if you follow me.

His problem is similar to one we’ve pointed out many times before, in somewhat different contexts. It’s not a matter of too MUCH government, but of too MANY governments.

He can vote against EVERY incumbent if he chooses (the Doug Ross solution), just as a sort of universal, howl-at-the-moon sort of protest, but that wouldn’t solve his problem. That is, if you consider not being able to buy a sports watch for 15 minutes a problem. And I’m sure many of you would. So commiserate with poor Mr. Kelly, a man without recourse to redress.

Meanwhile, over in the Hillaryverse…

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As the Clintons prepare to engage in catharsis tonight and tomorrow, it seems fitting to see what’s going on over in the alternative universe in which the diehard Hillary supporters live and move and have their being. We’ve visited it before, but it remains a strange place to the uninitiated, a place where people can say the following without a trace of irony:

Open Letter To SuperDelegates:

Rarely is one person given the opportunity and the responsibility to make a decision which will affect the future of their country. This is indeed such a time. It is as important a decision as the decision that citizens of this country made to revolt against the British government. It is as important a time as the moment that John Hancock decided to prominently sign his name, knowing that his signature would be considered treason punishable by death. Soon, each superdelegate will make a decision that will irrevocably usher in a time of corruption and political cheating or prosperity and a stable productive government. Such is the choice you have before you: whether to nominate Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Barack Obama has no substantial experience in government, no distinguished voting record, and no history of patriotic service to this country. Further, he has no leadership experience, having accomplished little during his tenure in Illinois or the Senate. His only experience is as a community organizer, a woefully inadequate preparation for the presidency. However, due to positive exposure from the media and the DNC, he has managed to catapult himself beyond far more qualified candidates. Further, he won many delegates from caucuses, a troublesome sign given that widespread caucus cheating has been documented and caucuses do not fairly represent the will of the voters. He has alienated key groups of traditionally Democratic voters. Do not be lulled into thinking that new younger voters will compensate for such voters, as they represent a huge block of moderate voters who elected Bill Clinton president. Do not think that empty phrases of change and hope can substitute for hard-core experience and a love of this country. Barack Obama’s only agenda is to get elected. He neither knows how to run this country or to be loyal to it. His loyalty is to himself alone, and to the goal of being elected president.

Hillary Clinton has substantial experience and a desire to do what is right and good for this country. While the media and the DNC abandoned her, she stood firm and strong, propelled by the loyalty and needs of eighteen million citizens. With her perseverance and policy knowledge, she demonstrated that she can lead this country while she weathered adversity and stood alone against the media and the political establishment…

Really. You can find that at justsaynodeal.com. But there is more. There is, as I say, a whole universe to explore — a universe where IT’S NOT OVER:

  • You can, for instance, find that Obama "was registered as a Muslim in Indonesia" from the video above, at hillaryclintonnews.blogspot.com.
  • Or read denunciations of the "Democratic National Coronation" at hireheels.com (motto: "We adore shoes, but we love Hillary," which at least shows the ability to poke fun at oneself).
  • Or read that "McCain Gets It" at hillaryorbust.com.

Here’s a longer list of such sites. Enjoy.

Private clubs in Columbia TODAY

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Remember that I told you last week that Clif LeBlanc was going to have a follow-up story on the Cap City Club anniversary, a piece that would tell us to what extent local private clubs have become less "exclusive" in the bad old sense over the past 20 years?

Well, he did, and I meant to ask y’all for your thoughts on it. Here’s a link to his story. Short version — most clubs are more open. At least one still has no black members.

If you go read Clif’s piece, and you’re so inclined, please come back here to discuss it.

White people cheating in desperate bid to become a minority like everybody else

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You’ve heard the news that white people will no longer be a majority by 2042, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But when I read this part:

The nation has been growing more diverse for decades, but the process
has sped up through immigration and higher birth rates among minority
residents, especially Hispanics…

I thought, Hey, wait a minute? Hispanics aren’t white? You mean, none of them are, not even those of Spanish extraction? Wasn’t there a time, not long ago, when Hispanics were considered white — or at least, some of them? Isn’t there a term that was used until fairly recently, something like "nonwhite Hispanics," suggesting that there were (as there are) white Hispanics?

I smell a conspiracy here, and it’s not about more and more whites seeing Hispanic as "aliens" — illegal or otherwise.

I think white people have cracked under peer pressure. They want to be a minority, because being a minority is, let’s face it, way cooler than being white. Come on, white people — if you’re honest you’ll admit this is true.

Growing up as a WASP, I always felt that I was missing out. So I did something about it — I became a Catholic, and starting talking more about my Celtic ancestors than my Anglo-Saxon ones. This made me a minority, and I’ve got to tell you, it made me feel a lot cooler. I started crossing myself whenever I thought white protestants might be looking at me, just so they’d know how much cooler I was than they — you know, like those Latin ballplayers in the Major Leagues when they come up to bat, and mafiosi at mob funerals. They’re cool, and so am I.

Anyway, after all the work I’ve gone to, I’m not going to sit still and watch while all white people suddenly rig the numbers and get declared a minority, without doing anything to earn it. I’ll bet they keep on eating white bread sandwiches and playing badminton and listening to Mantovani and stuff; just watch them. They will NEVER be cool, and I don’t think they should be able to cheat like this by throwing out the white Latinos.

Something must be done about this. Take away their birth control pills or something; I don’t know.

Colbert: S.C. is SO not gay

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Let’s credit Adam Fogle — the guy who started it all when he broke the story initially — with bringing to my attention the clip of Stephen Colbert explaining in no uncertain terms why his native state and mine is so not gay, no matter what those British ad wizards may say.

This should settle the matter, as I can hardly imagine a more authoritative source. He knows what’s what. Remember, this is a guy who gets all his South Carolina news from Brad Warthen’s Blog:

Butch says he and Kevin working pro bono for DMV

1 Reply

Just got this e-mail from Butch Bowers, one of the attorneys who stuck up for the "I Believe" license plate on our Monday op-ed page:

Brad – enjoyed
reading you blog post about our piece and the DMV’s release of yet another
license plate.  In one of the comments to this post, a reader
asks you if Kevin
and I billed DMVBowersb08_4
for writing the piece and if we are getting paid by the state
to defend this suit or if we are working pro bono.  If you are interested in
responding, I thought I would let you know that we are in fact providing pro
bono representation to DMV.  We didn’t bill anybody nor did we otherwise get
paid for writing the op ed piece, and our representation won’t cost the
taxpayers any money at all.
 
Thanks very much,
and I hope you are doing well.  Take care,
 
Butch
OK, Butch, "I believe" you. But if my ol’ friend Kevin hasn’t found a way to bill somebody on this, he must be slipping…

Another license plate, another bad idea

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Here we go again. I just got this release from S.C. DMV:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 21, 2008

GEORGIA TECH FOUNDATION LICENSE PLATE AVAILABLE
Blythewood, SC – The South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles (SCDMV) announced today the availability of a new specialty license plate.
    The Georgia Tech Foundation license plate is now available in SCDMV offices across the state. The fee for the Georgia Tech Foundation license plate is $70 every two years in addition to the regular motor vehicle registration fee. The plate is available to the general public and has no special requirements for obtaining the plates.   
    A portion of the fees collected for the Georgia Tech Foundation plate will be used for scholarships to Georgia Tech for students from South Carolina.
     To view images of all the specialty license plates currently available, visit the SCDMV Web site at www.scdmvonline.com.
                    #####

We had another op-ed piece in today’s paper on the interminable debate over whether South Carolina should issue "I Believe" plates. I thought Kevin and Butch did pretty well with what their client gave themHumanists to work with. Gotta hand it to them, the "Secular Humanists of the Low Country" plate was a new one on me.

And it makes a certain kind of sense for the state to make "I Believe" plates if it’s going to make "In Reason We Trust" plates, and it should make those if it’s going to make, oh, I don’t know… "Surfrider Foundation" plates. (By the way, I am not making any of these up. You can look at all of them here.)

But as I’ve said before here, and as we’ve said editorially in the paper, we shouldn’t be making any of these specialty plates, especially not the ones that exist to raise money for some cause or other. I’m not going to repeat all the arguments. I set them out back here. But I will say this much again:

The purpose of a license plate is essentially a law enforcement one — they should be quickly identifiable as SC plates, which is a standard that all these special vanity plates blow out of the water.

With all these different plates already, how a cop is supposed to tell whether he’s looking at an SC plate or not at a glance is beyond me…

‘Member’-ship

1 Reply

My Sunday column was originally about 11 inches longer than the published form. One of the first things that went in editing it down was my parenthetical digressions, which are sometimes my favorite parts — even though they frequently have NOTHING to do with my point.

An example would be the one in the original second paragraph of the column, to wit:

    You did? Are you sure? I just ask because, as a member of the U.S.
economy (Can you be a “member of the economy?” I don’t see why not,
since everybody these days refers to uniformed military personnel as
“members of the military,” as though the Army were the Kiwanis Club or
something), I’ve got to tell you that I’m feeling a little
understimulated.

It’s a little difficult for me to explain why, but this is a pet peeve of mine. I hate hearing of military personnel referred to as "members of the military." It’s like calling soldier, sailors or marines fingers or toes (or some even less noble appendage), or comparing them to participants in some private club, which to me seems to denigrate their service in some undefinable way.

Those of you old enough to have a sense of perspective will realize that this is a fairly recent construction. I first started hearing it regularly in the 90s, maybe just after the Gulf War. It’s basically yet another awkward attempt to be "gender-inclusive." You tend to hear it as a replacement for the traditional "servicemen." Why we can’t say "servicemen and -women" when we mean to include both, I don’t know.

WHAT ‘gay beaches?’

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Readers of this blog learned yesterday that "South Carolina is so gay," or so a just-aborted British ad854gayembeddedprod_affiliate74sourc
campaign would have it. I can’t take credit for that "scoop," of course — Adam Fogle broke it.

But it wasn’t until I saw a reproduction of the poster itself in the paper today (and aren’t those posters, on display at a station in the London Underground, going to be a hot item on E-Bay?) that I learned that among South Carolina’s "gay" charms are "gay beaches."

That’s a new one on me. Where would these "gay beaches" be? Certainly not on the Grand Strand — must be somewhere further down the coast.

Not that I’m interested for myself, you understand.

And not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Wouldn’t World Population Day be a lot more fun without all these darned PEOPLE?

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Just moments ago I received this release from an outfit called "Population Media Center," regarding something called "World Population Day." An excerpt:

    Today as we commemorate World Population Day, Population Media Center and Population Institute pledge their commitment to help bring population numbers into balance with natural resources, so humanity can live in harmony with the earth….

Whenever I hear from folks who are terribly worried about World Population, folks who don’t like "growing population" any more than Mark Sanford likes "growing government," I get more than a little creeped out.

That’s because I can’t escape this suspicion — I’ve had it all my life — that, like Soylent Green, "population" is… people! And the only way to reduce it is to get rid of the, well, people. What do we do when the Whitetail deer population gets out of control? We go shoot ’em — lots of em.

And when we’re talking people, I have a little trouble getting on board with that. Unless, of course, Big Brother is for it, in which case I think it’s just peachy.

Democrats officially write off the xenophobe vote

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Now this one ought to set off the nativists:

In Convention First, 2008 Democratic National Convention To Be Simulcast In Spanish

Comcast Named Official Cable Television and Video On Demand Provider, Will Produce and Distribute Bi-Lingual Convention Coverage to Millions Worldwide

DENVER – In keeping with its commitment to make the 2008 Democratic National Convention the most accessible and technologically-savvy event of its kind, the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) announced today that Comcast Corporation will produce simultaneous, online streaming coverage of the Convention in Spanish at DemConvention.com and make available a broad range of Convention content through its signature On Demand service.  The DNCC also announced that Comcast has been named the Convention’s Official Cable Television and Video-On-Demand (VOD) provider.
    “We set out to ‘bring down the walls’ of the Pepsi Center and make this year’s historic Convention as inclusive and accessible to as many people as possible,” said Leah D. Daughtry, CEO of the DNCC. “Comcast is helping us bring the Convention to a growing number of computer screens and televisions throughout the country and around the world.”
    From the Comcast Media Center, based in the Denver metro area, Comcast will provide live, gavel-to-gavel Spanish-language interpretation of all Convention activities…
    “With Spanish as the primary language of approximately 35 million Americans – not to mention the more than 300 million Spanish-speakers outside the United States – offering bilingual coverage of the Convention makes more people feel welcome under the Democratic Party’s ‘big tent’,” said Texas State Senator and Convention Co-Chair Leticia Van de Putte. “As a Texan and a Latina, I’m proud to belong to a party that embraces the Hispanic community.”

"Ay, caramba!" the English-only crowd is thinking right about now. "No somos listos por eso!" (Or would that be, "no estamos listos"? Randy?) I’m not even going to get into the fact that the last part of Leticia Van de Putte’s name sounds like an insult in Spanish, because that would be digressing way too much…

Does this mean some of y’all will be voting for McCain now?

Sexy chess

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Y‘all know what a waste I consider these completely unnecessary Kulturkampf battles to be; we’ve got about a gazillion more important things to be spending our political energies on. So imagine my dismay, and my lack of interest in getting involved, when the latest craziness struck so close to home.

But there was just one thing in the "Irmo High Gay/Straight club" story that I could not allow to pass without commenting. It was this:

    “This group is forming to provide support for the gay and lesbian students,” said C. Ray Drew, director of the South Carolina Equality Coalition, a gay rights advocacy group. “It provides a reprieve of the often hostile environment gay students often encounter. This club is no more sexual than the chess club.”

The chess club? Oh, come on… it’s a little more sexual than the chess club,Chess isn’t it? It would have to be,
unless chess has changed a lot since I was in high school.

Maybe there’s something going on between the queen and the knight that I’ve missed. Or between the knight and the knight, given our context here. And don’t even get started on the bishops; Randy and I are Catholics, and we will take offense…

Radical Chic, and Mau-Mauing the Superdelegates

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Four quick things:

  1. First, don’t try to figure out the headline on this post. It doesn’t exactly make sense; I just liked it.
  2. Second, The Washington Post has a piece today suggesting that if Hillary Clinton is going to point to Barack Obama’s associations with ’60s-era radicals, she’ll need to answer for her own experience "in the summer of 1971 when she worked as an intern at a left-wing law
    firm in Oakland, Calif., that defended communists and Black Panthers."
  3. Third, when folks do give Obama a hard time about the Weather Underground, why do they talk about Bill Ayres, when the guy’s name rings no bells for me? Why don’t they speak instead of Ayres’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn, who is way more famous and way, way more memorable? She and Obama worked in the same law firm once, and when an Obama fund-raiser was held at Ayres’ home when he was running for state Senate, it was her home, too? This seems to me a slight to female radicals everywhere, and they are not a category of woman one usuals wants to cross…
  4. Finally, which do you prefer, Weather Underground, or the much-cooler, Dylan-inspired "Weatherman?" Not that I’m trying to influence your decisions…

Duck! The culture war just started back up

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Just as it looks like maybe we can have a relatively high-minded campaign with two presidential nominees who both can appeal to us independents, the Kulturkampf flares back up.

This delighted The Wall Street Journal this morning, which as the official spokespaper of conservatism went out of its way to affirm Democratic fears of the "Republican attack machine" when it gleefully greeted the California Supreme Court decision in favor of same-sex "marriage:"

Gay Marriage Returns
    Just when the news was filling with stories about a Republican Party gasping for air, along comes the California Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision yesterday legislating gay marriage. The GOP certainly hasn’t done anything to deserve such luck.
    Recall how in November 2003 the Massachusetts Supreme Court, also by a 4-3 vote, issued a similar gay marriage pronouncement. It dogged Democrat John Kerry all the way to Election Day. The issue got so hot that the liberal fever swamps came to believe that Karl Rove had invented this greatest of all "wedge" issues.
    Nope. Judges invent wedge issues. Always have. As with California’s Supreme Court, many of the berobed judiciary take it as their solemn duty to do the people’s thinking for them on the modern world’s most difficult and divisive social issues. So it was with Roe v. Wade, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared 50 state legislatures irrelevant. The aftermath has been more than 30 years of the abortion wars….

Correction_gay_marria_wartOh, and in case you think the WSJ‘s characterization of the left as wont to impose judicial fiat in spite of
what the people of our republic may want is a bit overboard, check out this quote from the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom (that’s him at right):

"As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation. It’s inevitable. This door’s wide open now. It’s going to happen, whether you like it or not."

So there. Pow, zing. I just want to go on record right now as saying that in the culture wars, I’m a conscientious objector. I just don’t want to have this fight.

I tell you how this always feels to me — like the two sides in these culture battles are allied with each other against the rest of us. How else do you explain both sides — from the voice of the political right to the gay rights folks — being so happy about this development? When both the Karl Roves and the Gavin Newsoms are thrilled, it’s time for the rest of us to duck, because here it all comes again.