Category Archives: Media

Got a nice note from E.J. Dionne this morning

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I appreciated E.J. taking the time to point something out to me...

So we’re entering the stage at which national media are about to start paying attention to what is said in South Carolina. So it is that I got a note from E.J. Dionne this morning. After praising this “poetic” passage in my blog earlier: “What fools the calendar doth make of us, even when we know better.”

… he went on to say,

OK, but still, does it have any impact? Huck wouldn’t have come within 3 points of McCain without Iowa — and Fred Thompson probably made the difference.
But you are right about our being fools. Original sin and all that.
Warmest EJ

He’s got a point. Especially about the Original Sin thing. But then, E.J.’s a smart guy. And a Catholic.

Yes, if Santorum wins Iowa, this is fertile territory for him. Being a values guy and all.

As for Iowa… My dismissive statements may be based in what I wish were true. As in, “Iowa shouldn’t matter, so I’ll say it doesn’t.” I wrote a column urging everyone to ignore Iowa four years ago. Then, when Obama won there, I started hoping it DID mean something — only to see him get body-slammed in N.H.

As I’ve mentioned here before, my baptism in national politics came when I covered Howard Baker in Iowa in 1980, for my Tennessee newspaper. Since I was covering it, Iowa took on  disproportionate importance in my mind. When Reagan lost there, I was eager to pronounce his candidacy over. We know how that turned out. My prejudice also arises from the fact that, as a voter, I am barred from participating in a caucus. I’d have the same problem, of course, in a primary state with party registration. Fortunately, we don’t have that here in SC, and our primaries are open.

Huntsman ad: “We are getting screwed…”

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Kudos to Jon Huntsman for being the first GOP candidate to break out of the prison of the trite and poorly worded, and give us an ad that says something, and does it with a bit of a bite.

And I’m not just saying that because he uses the word “screwed” in mixed company.

I’m saying it because he actually tells you something about himself in a way that you might take note, and remember.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as Henry McMaster in praising it:

I miss Ronald Reagan.  I served as his first US Attorney.

We all wish he would appear out of the cornfield in a “Field of Dreams” and be our nominee for President.

But right now – there is only one true Reagan Republican in the race, a leader who worked for Ronald Reagan and has proven himself over the years to be a strong, consistent conservative, with the best record as a chief executive creating jobs, cutting taxes and balancing budgets at the state level.

That is my good friend Jon Huntsman.

I hope you’ll take a moment to watch Jon’s latest TV ad. It truly is a wake up call for America.

Our nation is deep in debt.  And we’ve lost trust in government to solve problems.

I believe Jon Huntsman is the leader we need to repair both the economic deficit and the deficit of trust that has afflicted our country.

Jon has never been a flip-flopper or an opportunist.  He has always been consistently pro-life and pro-family.  As Governor of Utah, he led the nation in creating jobs, cutting taxes and stimulating real economic growth.

Jon Huntsman is the most extraordinary Governor I’ve seen since Carroll Campbell. And he’s also the only one in the presidential race with foreign policy experience as a United States Ambassador to both Singapore and China.  The world we live in is far too dangerous to pick another president with no foreign policy experience.

I ask you as a friend, as a South Carolinian, a father and an American to join me in restoring trust, dignity, and integrity in Washington, DC by supporting Jon Huntsman for President.

Peggy and I wish you and your family a very happy, healthy and blessed 2012.

Sincerely,
Henry McMaster

I’m not sure this is a “wake-up call for America.” It’s more like a “get up briefly and let the dog out” call. But at least you don’t sleep soundly through it, and that’s something.

Compared to what it’s up against, this ad deserves brief applause, at the minimum.

In the views of some of my cartoonist friends…

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When I received the above cartoon from Bill Day, it caused me to go look for Robert Ariail‘s latest on the subject (more or less).

There’s an interesting area of agreement there — interesting because, given their political predilections, Bill would welcome the idea of the GOP being led into obsolescence, while the idea of Obama being the beneficiary would be distressing to Robert.

Politics aside, I hope this New Year will be a great one for both of these guys. Which reminds me: It’s past time Robert and I got together again at Yesterday’s. I need to find out when he’ll be in town…

N.H. paper says ‘Ron Paul is a dangerous man’

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This just in from The Slatest:

Things are going well for Ron Paul in Iowa, but the GOP hopeful may not get as warm of welcome in New Hampshire – at least if one of the state’s more influential newspapers gets its way.

The New Hampshire Union Leader ran on op-ed Thursday from its publisher trashing Paul for his “warped” views on national security and foreign policy and calling him the “favored candidate of the lunatic fringe,” which includes “white supremacists, anti-Semites, [and] truthers.”

“Ron Paul is a dangerous man,” the anti-endorsement begins. It ends: “His defenders say they admire Ron Paul’s ‘consistency.’ It is true, Paul has been consistently spouting this nonsense. It is about time New Hampshire voters showed him the door.”

The paper endorsed Newt Gingrich back in November. You can read the Paul piece here.

Of course, the Union-Leader isn’t exactly known for toeing the mildest of lines itself.

But what about that really out there stuff that appeared in Paul’s newsletters over the years? I’d be curious to know how Doug Ross and other Paulistas around here react to that stuff.

It doesn’t have to be THAT graphic for me…

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USC just put out this release:

Up in smoke: Research shows graphic images can deter smokers

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but its worth might just be measurable in terms of lives, according to research by a University of South Carolina public health professor.

That’s because visual imagery on cigarette packages deters smoking, and the more graphic they are, the better the results, said Jim Thrasher, assistant professor in the Arnold School of Public Health Department of Health Promotion, Education and Behavior.

“Tobacco use continues to be the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, and graphic health warnings are among the most cost-effective interventions that exist,” Thrasher said….

Personally, I don’t need graphic images to deter me. One whiff of the stuff is enough to persuade me to stay away from it forever.

If you must show me a “graphic” image, the one above is fine. It was the winner of a contest in California:

The challenge was to create a anti smoking ad powerful enough to turn people off cigarettes without resorting to the gruesome imagery so prevalent in anti-smoking campaigns. With the help of a couple of dancers, an up-for-anything ad agency and hundreds of yards of Lycra, Los Angeles photographer Ricardo Marenco did just that.

“I wanted to evoke a sea of people trapped inside their addiction,” says Marenco, who created the shot for the California Department of Public Health’s billboard and print campaign. To achieve his desired effect, he photographed the dancers individually inside 7-foot-tall Lycra cigarettes. Then he digitally overlaid embers and smoke from real cigarettes on the figures. The ads ran without any words, only a helpline number — the image said it all.

But apparently, you have to be really gross for some people. Below is one of the images that came with the USC release. Why is it in Spanish (“garganta” means “throat”)? I guess because of this part of the release:

As a result of his work with colleagues from Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health, Mexico’s Minister of Health adopted their recommendations for which pictorial warnings to put on cigarette packages, which began circulating in September.

Thrasher, who has a joint research and faculty appointment with Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health, is also assessing what labels are the most convincing for low socioeconomic status groups…

Tell Her Majesty that I just don’t KNOW…

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Yesterday, two representatives from Her Majesty’s Government came to see me to talk politics, as they periodically do.

It can be fun to play the local expert, whether for national or foreign media, or in service of the Special Relationship — especially if you’re an Anglophile like me. Maybe I can’t see “Tinker, Tailor” where I live (yet), but I can contribute to a report that might, just might, cross a latter-day George Smiley’s desk. OK, so it’s not very likely, but hey, I can dream…

The temptation is to sound like you really know what’s going on, even if you don’t — like The Tailor of Panama, or Our Man in Havana. But I’m not the type to mislead HMG. Perish the thought.

So yesterday, I had to tell my visitors that I just can’t explain what’s happening in the South Carolina primary, and therefore can’t predict anything. And that’s the unfortunate truth.

I don’t know why Newt Gingrich is suddenly leading by double digits in polls in South Carolina, other than it’s his turn. I don’t know whether that trend will continue, because I don’t understand the dynamics that led her to this point.

And one of the problems is this: I’m not hearing from people who are Gingrich fans. I have to acknowledge that maybe there are things I don’t hear, or am not exposed to, because I’m no longer the editorial page editor of the state’s largest newspaper. Maybe that’s why I feel like I understand what’s happening now less than I understood the situation four years ago.

But you know what? So much of what I was hearing and seeing then was through my blog. I wrote relatively little about national politics in the paper, so most of my interactions in that area were online. And to the extent that I was seen as someone engaged in writing about the presidential race, it was online. For instance, a number of the national and international media types who were interviewing me initially didn’t even know I worked at the newspaper; they had come to me as a widely-read blogger.

And I’m more widely read online now than I was then. My monthly page views are at least four times what they were then. And yet…

  • My traffic hasn’t been steadily climbing in the months leading up to the primary, the way it did four years ago. It hit a peak in August, then dropped a bit.
  • I  haven’t had a request for an interview from national or international sources since I spoke with E.J. Dionne at the start of November, which would be weird anytime, but especially with a primary coming up.
  • I just don’t run into people who are excited about the upcoming primary, either online or in person. Think about it — beyond Doug’s perpetual support for Ron Paul, who have you seen here who is pumped about a candidate? Well, it’s like that in the wider world. Quick — name five people you know who are eager to vote for Newt? You probably can’t. I know I can’t. People may be saying they’ll support Newt when a pollster asks, but they’re not going around bubbling with public excitement about it.
  • There were several national and international advocacy groups that had set up SC offices for the duration four years ago — and they had done it months before now. By the summer of 2007, they were up and running. This time, I know of one such group that has started a local office in recent months — One, the Bono group. I know a lot of nonprofits are far less flush with money than they were then, but it’s still remarkable.

Yes, I know that the buzz in SC should only be half of what it was four years ago, since only one party is having a primary. But it’s really much less than half. Things just feel dead by comparison.

I think one reason for that is expressed in that same Winthrop poll I referenced above. It also shows that 59 percent of those polled — and that includes Republicans — believe that Obama’s going to be elected. That, combined with a lower energy level (compared to last year) among Tea Partiers, has led to a really subdued campaign.

In a normal campaign, the fact that Newt is so far ahead, this late, would mean that he had it more or less locked up. This year, I don’t know. The polls give so easily this year, and can so easily take away. And this is Newt Gingrich — a guy with a well-known talent for self-destruction.

Normally, at this point, South Carolinians would be coalescing around the Republican most likely to with the nomination — usually, the establishment. A Bush. Bob Dole. John McCain. Now, the very definition of what it is to be a Republican — much less a South Carolina Republican — is more up in the air than at any time I remember.

So it seems to me there’s a better-than-even chance that SC won’t pick the eventual winner this time. The whole process is too wobbly, and less susceptible to steadying factors than in the past. And if that happens, there will be even less energy, and much less national attention, focused on the SC GOP primary four years from now.

But I just don’t know. When it’s hard to explain why what is already happening is happening, it’s very hard to predict what will happen next.

Our friends at Pub Politics ask you to give

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Some of us ring bells. Some of us find another way to give:

Hello everyone,

Allow me to take a break from my regular political banter and tell you about an organization that could use our help.

It’s the holiday season: we rejoice in miracles and holiness at this time, enjoying family, food, friends, and festivities. As families, we gather to share time, love and traditions and create memories that last a lifetime.

The children at Carolina Children’s Home have often experienced the season quite differently. Home has frequently been a place of abuse, not hugs; neglect, not love; abandonment, not gathering.

This Christmas, let’s take these children into our family circle of caring. We can help create holiday magic and memories for the children and give them a holiday full of joy and love.

This week’s Pub Politics will be a little different. Sure, we will be drinking beer and talking politics. But this week Phil and I will also be raising money for the Carolina Children’s Home. Republican or Democrat, this is something we can all do to help people less fortunate than ourselves.

Let’s open our arms and welcome these children by making this opportunity part of our holiday plans!

Please go to https://rally.org/pubpolitics, click the “Give Now” button to the right and make a donation.

Thank you in advance for your generosity. Have a very Merry Christmas.

– Wesley

Wesley Donehue, that is. He and Phil Bailey are the hosts of Pub Politics. Which I’ve been on 7 times, you know.

Did Colbert actually BUY a piece of the GOP primary, even provisionally?

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That seems to be what I read earlier in the week, and shook my head in disbelief and moved on, before reading it again.

The State said Stephen Colbert failed to buy “naming rights” to the presidential primary, as one would expect, but then matter-of-factly drops this bombshell:

But the GOP did agree to place a question on its Jan. 21 primary ballot after Colbert, a South Carolina native, in return pledged a “significant contribution” from his super PAC to the S.C. Republican Party. (A GOP spokesman declined to say how big that pledge was.)…

Officials with the S.C. Republican Party met with Colbert a few times and reached an agreement to place a question about “corporate personhood” on the primary ballot. But they said no to the naming rights and debate co-sponsorship offers…

Really? Can that be? Nah, I said, and moved on…

Then I read this in The Free Times:

The Comedy Central satirist — and South Carolina native — approached state Republican Party officials a few months ago about making a significant contribution to the party through his Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrowsuper PAC.

In return, Colbert requested the party place a ballot question on the state’s first-in-the-South GOP presidential primary set for Jan. 21, that dealt with corporate personhood. The party agreed and on Nov. 11 asked state election officials to add a ballot referendum that asked voters to decide whether “corporations are people” or “only people are people.”…

But then, it apparently didn’t actually happen, because the party’s Matt Moore said “that the party never received a contribution from Colbert’s PAC.” And in any case the Supreme Court recently struck all such questions from the ballot (nice going there, justices!)

So basically, I guess if I had enough money, I could at least in theory go to the GOP and get it to place on the ballot a “referendum” question asking voters, say, whether they think The constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment should be waived in the case of the network hammerheads who cancelled “Firefly” in its first season.

Or maybe something else. Something actually controversial.

Folks, I like comedy as much as the next guy. And you know how little I think of political parties. But I hate to see one degrade itself to this extent. I mean, Hello! This guy makes his living MAKING FUN of y’all…

A sober harrumph about Redneck TV

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It is a comment upon the state of journalism, of the South, of popular culture, of the Zeitgeist, and all sorts of other things that bore me to mention that this morning, The State ran a well-promoted piece on the phenomenon of “Redneck TV.”

No, I’m not saying a South Carolina journalist took it upon himself or herself to comment on this trend. The paper ran a canned piece from The Los Angeles Times. And it didn’t say much, beyond placing “Ice Road Truckers” (which, to me, still ranks as the show least likely, of all shows in the history of television, to interest anyone on the planet Earth as a recurring series) within a certain context of genre.

At least NPR, also reporting on this phenomenon (there must have been a free feed for entertainment journos sometime in the last few days out on the Left Coast), bothered to say something about it. Didn’t say much, just a harrumph, but that’s better than nothing:

These shows give you a South with no people of color, and they weirdly lack contact with sophisticated southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas; I guess it’s tough to play the bumpkin card when you’re looking at skyscrapers and a booming technology corridor.

It helps to think of reality TV shows as situation comedies for a new generation. And every TV fan knows sitcoms depend on stereotypes to fuel their best jokes. On these shows, decades of stereotypes about the South have risen again, ready to make a new generation laugh at the expense of real understanding.

Despite reality TV’s tendency to stupefy everything it touches, perhaps it’s time for these programs to actually get real, and give us a vision of Southern culture that reaches beyond the fun loving redneck.

Yes, as commentary goes, that’s pretty formulaic and trite, grumbling about stereotypes. But at least NPR took time to disapprove of such goings-on. And I appreciate that.

SC politics looks extra weird from the outside

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No matter how many times it happens, I always have this odd feeling of disconnection, of unreality, when I see how SC politics looks from the outside.

For instance, this game, which invites you to drag important endorsers down to the presidential candidates you think they’ll endorse… and then look back in the coming weeks and see how you did.

Aside from the SC angle, it’s an odd game. Think about it. Who, beyond political professionals (and few, if any, of them), has enough knowledge of who the key endorsers are in key states even are, much less know enough about them to divine, or even come close to divining, whom they will support?

And then there’s the really weird part. The part where there are people who are actual candidates for President of the United States who might be sitting up nights waiting to see whether Nikki Haley will confer her endorsement upon them.

Which doubles back and reinforces my first point. As a guy who has observed SC politics up close and personal for longer than some of the younger professional observers have been alive, I can’t swear that I know what sort of influence Nikki’s endorsement would have. That’s a tough thing to read. But I’m sure that among the greater primary electorate it’s greater than what it would be among political insiders. So it makes sense for her to be on this chart.

But it still feels weird. Nikki Haley? The one who until so recently was a relatively isolated back-bencher in the SC House, and hasn’t exactly set the world on fire as governor? An influencer as to who will be the most powerful person in the world?

Really?

As plain as he can be: Newt’s going for pure, unadulterated generic

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Now that Newt Gingrich is the apparent front-runner, I thought y’all might want to marvel with me at his new ad.

I think it just might be the most generic political ad (generic for a Republican, anyway) I have ever seen.

A little “Morning in America.” A little “America the Beautiful.” Breathtakingly lacking in controversy.

Maybe its natural that the most idiosyncratic “front-runner” I can remember in many a day would seek to be as ordinary as possible. As generic as he can be, totally friction-free.

Or maybe Newt’s overdoing it a little…

Ben Smith at Politico calls it “literal.” I call it “Extreme Vanilla.”

How does this happen? I’ll tell ya…

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This being a family blog, one doesn’t usually find this sort of thing here. But since I’m told that it actually appeared in a South Carolina newspaper — it was all the talk at the round table of regulars at the Capital City Club this morning — I suppose I should deal with it.

The above image is purportedly from The Greenville News, and The Village Voice wonders about it:

How does that even happen?

We’ve reached out to the Greenville News copy desk, who hopefully will be able to chime in on how the most hilarious copy editing mistake of the year came to be.

Jim Romenesko spoke to a reporter there who said that the paper was getting complaints already (from people who are apparently no fun) and apologizing to them.

Well, I’ll tell ya…

  • First, someone appears to have violated a cardinal rule — don’t put anything, in any way, shape or form, into copy, however temporarily or intended for internal consumption, that you wouldn’t want to see in the paper. Ever. It’s tempting to share sarcastic asides between reporters and editors, but get up and walk across the room to do it. Don’t ever put it in the copy, because the chance of this happening is too great. (When I supervised reporters, I told them not even to make the slugs — the internal names — of their stories — anything embarrassing. Because, back in the pre-pagination days, it was way too easy for that stray piece of type at the top to get stuck to the page after it was trimmed off in the composing room.)
  • Second, the page didn’t get proofed. At all. By anyone. There are a lot of ways this can happen in understaffed newsrooms, but here’s the most merciful scenario: The page was proofed, and “corrected” type was sent through, and somehow had this word in it (perhaps it was the initial response of a stressed editor who had thought that page was gone already), and no one looked at the page again after it was put on there.

But basically, there is no excuse that serves.

It’s easy to blame this, as Romenesko does, on the extreme practice at newspaper companies of having copyediting done off-site. But basically, with this sort of error, if it’s going to happen, it could happen anywhere. The reason having copyediting done off-site is phenomenally stupid is that it increases the chance of an error that no local person would make, and only a local person would notice. And if mid-size to small papers are not locally authoritative, they are nothing.

By the way, something like this happened at The Jackson (TN) Sun when I worked there back in the 70s. We were in that interim stage between linotype machines and front-end computer systems. Copy would be edited and then output onto a rolled-up strip of punchtape. The tape would be fed into a typesetting machine that would roll out the copy on photographic paper. Occasionally, the tape would hang up while being fed through the machine. The result would be a stutter, and a letter would be repeated over and over until the kink worked its way through.

The initial error would not be human. But it was up to humans to catch it and correct it before the page was let go.

One day, that failed. The punch tape on an obit — an obit, of all things, the holy of holies — snagged briefly while going through the machine. Instead of saying that services would be held at the funeral home, it came out, “services will be held at the fukkkkkkkkkk home.”

It was caught partly through the press run, but some papers had already gone out. Including the one that went to the bereaved family.

Our publisher — or was it the executive editor? — personally delivered a corrected copy to that family, along with the most abject of apologies.

Perry’s “aw, shucks” approach glosses over some ominously imperial assumptions

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This aired last night in Iowa during “The Tonight Show.” The explanation, from the campaign:

“While the rest of GOP field is busy handling scandals, inconsistencies and contradictions on important issues, Gov. Perry’s appearance on Leno and his special Leno ad show he is confident enough to use the attention from last month’s Michigan debate to highlight his status as the true outsider conservative in the Republican field,” said Perry campaign communications director Ray Sullivan.

He’s walking a delicate line, between “I’m just plain folks” and “I’m dumber than a bag o’ hammers.”

Interesting that his campaign would regard going on Leno to make fun of himself as somehow more relevant and substantial than “scandals, inconsistencies and contradictions on important issues.”

One other point: He wants us to think of him a jus’ plain folks, but among the few words in his ad, he says, “a part-time Congress.” But think about that. That’s what one who would be emperor would do: Send the Congress home.

Perry’s rhetoric is redolent with such suggestions. As many times as we’ve seen the “oops” clip, how many have noticed that what he was saying was, “It’s three agencies of government, when I get there, that’re gone…” As though it would simply happen once he was elected, as though he would bring it about by fiat.

Perhaps that should attract our attention more than Perry’s folksy flubs.

Happy Thanksgiving, Richard — and everyone

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Once upon a time there was a thing called newspapers, and Richard Crowson is my oldest newspaper friend. One of his first published editorial cartoons illustrated a column I wrote for the editorial page of the journalism department lab paper at Memphis State University in 1975. I already knew Richard from working with him at the MSU library.

A couple of years later, Richard joined me at The Jackson Sun, where we worked together for close to a decade, Richard as the editorial cartoonist.

Then, in 1985, I persuaded him to come out to Kansas, where he eventually became editorial cartoonist of The Wichita Eagle. A couple of years after that, I left to come here. Richard stayed.

Richard, being a talented editorial cartoonist, was laid off from his job about six months before Robert Ariail and I were.

Anyway, I only possess a copy of one of his cartoons, the one above from 1982. It’s my favorite. Sorry that the perspective is a bit askew. It’s too big for my scanner, and I had to shoot it with my camera at an angle to get the reflection off the glass of the frame.

Enjoy.

Oh, another thing about Richard. He’s not only a great cartoonist; he’s probably the most talented picker I know — of any stringed instrument you care to name, as long as it’s used in the production of Bluegrass. The first thing Richard did when he arrived in Wichita was go out and buy several second-hand kitchen chairs for his apartment, for his fellow pickers to sit on once he found some. Which he promptly did.

Below, you see him at left with the rest of The Home Rangers, “Kansas’ Premier Cowboy Band.”

Column II: It’s the government we’re TALKING about here, Cal

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Just as one should change a car’s oil every 3,000 miles, I think it is helpful to call “Bull!” about everything 3,000th time I hear a nonsensical rhetorical cliche.

Such as this one in a Cal Thomas column I read in the paper today:

There is something else Republicans must not do. They must avoid making the same mistake Democrats make by looking to government as a first resource.

Ahem.

Cal, you were talking in this column about people running for president of the United States. Someone to run the executive branch of the government. Someone to be in charge of government programs. Someone we trust to be in charge of the things we have decided that we want out government to do.

We are not hiring a pastor for our church, or a den mother for a Cub Scout den, or the CEO of a corporation, or the executive director of a nonprofit. We are looking for someone to run the government.

That’s the job. This person will not be in charge of anything else in the world except the government. Therefore the only tools this person will have at his (or, in one unlikely case, her) disposal will be government tools.

Therefore, the only proposals any reasonable person — whether Democrat, Republican, or whatever — would expect to hear such candidates speak about would be proposals for what to do with the government. Any other proposals would be completely irrelevant.

Now, you or I and lots of other folks might prefer to turn elsewhere for solutions to problems we see in the world, and that’s fine. We should do so as we are inclined. But that is completely irrelevant to the task of choosing a president, a person who would have nothing to do with running those other aspects of life.

Not only the “first,” but the only “resource” this person would be empowered to use in carrying out his (or her) duties would be government.

I just thought I’d point that out. It seems to me to be painfully obvious, but you seemed confused, and I like to help.

Column I: Cindi Scoppe puts Georgia port dredging issue into perspective

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Today, I think I’ll use some columns I read in the papers this morning as conversation-starters. We’ll begin with Cindi Scoppe’s balanced, thoughtful approach to DHEC’s granting of a dredging permit to Georgia.

As is her wont, she skewers weak arguments on all sides:

  • To those who ask, “Did Gov. Haley pressure her appointees to the DHEC board to approve the permit?,” she explains that it doesn’t matter. The governor says she fully supports the decision. She takes ownership of it. It doesn’t matter whether she pressured anyone. And what pressure can she exert? She appointed these people, but she lacks power to remove them. Who cares? She appointed them, she in no way distances herself from the decision.
  • Then there’s this red herring: “Why did the DHEC commissioners put Georgia’s economic interests above the economic interests of the state of South Carolina?” It’s not DHEC’s job to decide on the basis of economic interests. It’s their job to protect the environment, which is a separate question.

Here’s the question Cindi urges lawmakers to concentrate on: Did the Corps of Engineers and Georgia grant enough concessions to meet our state’s environmental requirements?

She continues with a discussion of various aspects of that consideration.

Then, in the end, she offers this bit of simple clarity:

We probably wouldn’t have to worry so much about cozying up to our competitors if our own Sen. Jim DeMint hadn’t helped put the Port of Charleston even further behind the Savannah Port, by delaying efforts to dredge Charleston Harbor. But the sad truth is that he has done far more to damage the Port of Charleston than anything DHEC could ever do. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much the Legislature can do about that.

All around, a good, solid column on a difficult issue.

Is Walid Hakim a leader? He says no…

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Today on their website, Occupy Columbia insists that Walid Hakim — who was arrested last night along with 19 others — is not a leader of their group. They were rather vehement about it:

An article was circulated by FitsNews.com proclaiming that Occupy Columbia has a leader, as they stated an unofficial leader.

This is NOT the case!

This article was taken completely out of context.

Occupy Columbia is and always will be a LEADERLESS movement.

Contact them and DEMAND a rewrite!!!

I could understand how Will would have gained that impression. I did, too, as you can see in the above video.

For me, Walid has been the spokesman — he’s always at the fore and available, he’s confident and articulate, he seems to know what’s going on. He’s the guy you see ostentatiously pacing at the back of the crowd talking on a cellphone as the governor’s press conference breaks upon, seeming to coordinate things. He always does things a little bigger than the others — holding his sign higher, wearing the more visible attire (a keffiyeh, a Marine Dress Blues blouse). He’s got the Days of Rage hair, the whole nine yards. News people gravitate to people like that — in a chaotic situation with no one officially in charge, you look for the guy who seems the least dazed, and start asking questions.

More traditional (if you’ll allow me this ironic use of the world) street protest leaders such as Brett Bursey have been in the background, by comparison with Walid.

But the main reason I always talk to Walid is that I know him. He and I serve together on the board of the Community Relations Council. Below you see him (just left of center) seated at one of our meetings earlier this week, in yet another incarnation, with blazer and khakis. (Yeah, I know it’s blurry, but I wasn’t planning on using it for publication. I was just fiddling with my iPhone during the meeting.)

I realize that to these folks, it’s a really, really important principle not to have leaders. But here’s my prediction: They’ll either get some leaders, or never really accomplish anything much beyond making headlines and getting arrested.

What I saw at the revolution, such as it was

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After the warning and before the arrests, these were the few chosen to be arrested, waiting as the rain began to fall.

There were about 100 apparent protesters milling about in the dark as the 6 p.m. deadline arrived. People in pools of harsh TV lights being interviewed, others talking on cellphones, others just waiting.

Walid Hakim was, as he has been, a center of attention. He told me — and maybe if I can get it uploaded, I’ll put up video later — that he had just learned that his great-great-great-great-great grandfather had owned the land on which the State House was located. So he said he was just hanging out on the family homestead, waiting to be arrested. He made dramatic statements about how the rights to speak and peaceably assembly that he had defended in the Marines were about to be denied him.

Brett Bursey was there, as he had been earlier in the day. “Do they take credit cards at the jail now?” he asked me. I said they certainly should, this being the 21st century and all. Then he slouched off to confer with others here and there. A few minutes later, I asked how many times he had been arrested, counting this time. He expressed doubt that he would get arrested, and acted a bit like he was being cheated. I didn’t really follow what he was saying was happening. Then he wandered off again.

The cops still hadn’t shown.

Walid and a dozen or 15 others grouped themselves around the Confederate soldier monument, with that “I’m going to be arrested” look in their eyes. At this point, I Tweeted out:

They’re so pumped up, chanting “WE. ARE. THE 99 PERCENT!” It would be rotten of Nikki not to arrest any of them. They’d feel so let down…

Eventually, some of the State House security guys showed up and announced that pursuant to the governor’s announcement, those who did not vacate would be arrested.

By then it had started drizzling. Walid and the other designated martyrs sat around the little fence enclosing the flagpole, and waited. My iPhone and camera started getting pretty wet. I went to stand under a tree. Didn’t help much.

Finally, the officers who had made the announcement came back out onto the grounds with reinforcements — maybe 20 uniformed officers. They formed a skirmish line, donning gloves, and started walking slowly toward Gervais.

I found myself walking backwards with the protesters who would NOT be arrested toward the sidewalk along the street. I realized the working media had stayed behind with those who were to be arrested. The police had simply walked past them, parting around them like a stream around a rock. I thought about standing on ceremony and demanding to be allowed back in with the other media, but a number of disconnected thoughts were running through my mind, such as:

  • I have no credentials, and this didn’t seem like a good moment, standing in the rain with everyone a little tense, to have a debate with the authorities about how I was, too still a member of the Fourth Estate, even though all I had to show was a bradwarthen.com business card. A damp one.
  • While I had bought the insurance on my iPhone, that meant I would “only” have to pay $175 to replace it if it were ruined by the rain.
  • My little Canon with which I was trying to shoot video was likely to suffer the same fate as the one before it, which was splashed by surf and never worked again. No one would reimburse me.
  • This was all moving WAY too slowly. At this rate, no one would get any cuffs before another half hour had passed.
  • What are the long-term effects of rain upon a silk bow tie?

What the line of cops wasn’t blocking, the media types still within the perimeter were. I couldn’t see what was going on with Walid and the rest.

I went ahead and crossed the street. As I did, I saw a group of protesters had gathered on the far side of Gervais under a blue tarp. I envied them their shelter as the wind suddenly picked up dramatically.

Then, it came down in buckets. I was entirely drenched by the time I made the door of 1201 Main.

I rode the elevator up, in my soaked blazer and black (formerly gray) pants and drooping bow tie and mop of thoroughly sopping hair. Everyone looked at me as though I were a lunatic. I got up to the Capital City Club and went to the bathroom to try to dry off some with the little terry cloth towels in there.

I went to a window to look back down at the scene I had left. I couldn’t see a thing. The TV lights seemed to be gone, even.

I went on into the Membership Committee meeting from which I was playing hooky. My appearance excited comment. One member asked me whether I was ignorant of the fact that there was an attached parking garage. I mumbled some explanations, sat down, and did my best to act normal.

Here’s a report from reporters who were paid to stay behind and witness the final tedious act of the drama:

Acting at the behest of Gov. Nikki Haley, S.C. Bureau of Protective Services troopers took 19 Occupy Columbia protesters in front of the State House into custody in a driving rainstorm around 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Officers escorted small groups of those taken into custody back towards the State House. Officers placed band-type handcuffs behind their back. Protesters did not resist; there was no violence.

“At least you don’t have to be in rain now,” one officer said to a protester as he led a man. Protesters arrested included both men and women.

It was not known what, if any, charges those taken into custody will face.

Haley’s directive was aimed at keeping the demonstrators off State House grounds during the night. She apparently will not order state troopers to formally remove them during daylight hours.

“We the people shall never be defeated!” protesters chanted immediately before being detained…

And so forth…