Category Archives: Radio

It’s not just SC; Gingrich surges ahead in Florida

This morning I was on Tom Finneran’s radio show in Boston for the third time in a week, and the subject turned to Florida, and I said something like it was unclear what would happen there — Romney was supposed to be strong. But then, he was supposed to be strong in South Carolina the week before last.

Well, it’s not unclear now. A Tweet from Rasmussen brought this to my attention exactly an hour later:

Less than two weeks ago, Mitt Romney had a 22-point lead in Florida, but that’s ancient history in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Following his big win in South Carolina on Saturday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich now is on top in Florida by nine.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Florida Republican Primary Voters, taken Sunday evening, finds Gingrich earning 41% of the vote with Romney in second at 32%. Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum runs third with 11%, while Texas Congressman Ron Paul attracts support from eight percent (8%). Nine percent (9%) remain undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here).

So the trend Gallup was picking up on late last week has accelerated. As the country watched those two debates last week, something crystallized in the minds of angry Republicans and Tea Partiers all over the country: Their anger had found its voice, and it belonged to Newt Gingrich.

‘… No! He is RISING!…’ Remembering Smokin’ Joe Frazier

The Herman Cain harassment charges

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Uh, oh — Rush Limbaugh and I agree about something. Quick, Robin — the antidote! It’s on your utility belt, you young fool!

Actually, not quite — but I do see he said something that may sound superficially like something I said. Earlier this morning, I wrote,

Yeah, I heard that. NPR interviewed the Politico guy who broke the story. As he mentioned having learned about this the last few weeks, I got to wondering: Who brought his attention to it, and why?

Well, the obvious guess would be his recently-threatened opponents. But I got to think about how if that’s the case, it seems like a case of overkill. Instead, his opponents should pony up money to air his videos everywhere, and as America gets totally wierded out, their Herman Cain problem would go away on its own.

I thought that, and I also thought, here we go again, with white men perpetuating the story about how black men just can’t leave women alone…

… as though white men can or something…

Then, later in the day, I saw that Limbaugh had said,

The Politico and the mainstream media has launched an unconscionable, racially stereotypical attack on an independent, self-reliant conservative black because for him that behavior is not allowed.

So you see, not quite the same thing. I wasn’t criticizing Politico for doing the story. It’s just that, as a longtime editor, one wonders where the story originated. And one puts the fact that all of a sudden Cain’s a threat with the fact that all of a sudden, this is out there. It doesn’t matter; the story is still a story, whatever the motives of the sources. And my evocation of the Clarence Thomas, high-tech lynching charge was just an added throwaway to set up the next line.

I think Rush actually means it. And for that matter, on a certain level, I mean it, too — in that I hate to see this happen to another prominent black man. Weird how it does seem to be the conservatives among that demographic group…. I also hate that I sort of believe it, because it would mean those women were subjected the boorish behavior. But hey, I don’t know what happened.

Anyway, consider this my backhanded way of giving y’all a place to write about the allegations reported by Politico.

Now I need to run. I’ve just got time to put together a Mark Block costume. I figure all I need is a pack of smokes…

Listening to hunterherring.com, right now

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Listening right now to my fellow granddad at hunterherring.com.

The picture above shows Hunter with our youngest granddaughter (his daughter’s, my son’s) at a Lunch Money concert in front of the Columbia Museum of Art several months ago. (Hunter’s wife works with us at ADCO, and Lunch Money’s drummer is with ADCO interactive, and the cameraman for “The Brad Show.” How’s that for cross-promotion? Back off, Jack — I’m a professional…)

Right now, Hunter’s playing Mary Wells singing “You Beat Me to the Punch.”

Listening to Hunter’s web station is like experiencing Nick Hornby’s “High Fidelity” in real life. I’m pretty sure that most of the songs on the fictional Rob’s Top Five lists would eventually be played on hunterherring.com.

Even the rednecks pick on South Carolina now

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This morning, I could not tolerate another second of the pledge drive on ETV Radio (even when I have money to give, and DO give, I can’t abide actually listening to the pledge drive; it’s all those repetitions of the phone number that get to me), and I didn’t like what was on Steve-FM, so I decided to get my first John Boy and Billy fix in a long while.

And that’s when I heard the Tim Wilson song you hear in the video above.

Partial lyrics:

You can go to war when you’re 18
But you can’t buy a beer
You can load missiles on a submarine
But you can’t buy a pistol here
You can breathe chemical weapon fumes
But they don’t want you to smoke
so when you’re shootin’ up a bar in Baghdad, don’t order a rum and coke

OK so far, typical redneck comic lament. But then you get to:

You can be a governor at 21
Or a president at 35
You can be the senator from South Carolina
If you can just stay alive…

This has gone too far. Jon Stewart picking on us is something you’d expect, but when the rednecks start giving us a hard time over our political predilections and idiosyncrasies, maybe we’d better start talking seriously about making some changes.

‘Obama: A disaster for civil liberties’… Really?

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On my way back to the office from Rotary today, I heard this guy Jonathan Turley on NPR going on and on about how Barack Obama is — gasp — “worse than Bush” on civil liberties (or words to that effect; I wasn’t taking notes while driving).

Conveniently, he wrote out his thoughts on this in an op-ed piece in The Los Angeles Times recently. An excerpt:

Civil libertarians have long had a dysfunctional relationship with the Democratic Party, which treats them as a captive voting bloc with nowhere else to turn in elections. Not even this history, however, prepared civil libertarians for Obama. After the George W. Bush years, they were ready to fight to regain ground lost after Sept. 11. Historically, this country has tended to correct periods of heightened police powers with a pendulum swing back toward greater individual rights. Many were questioning the extreme measures taken by the Bush administration, especially after the disclosure of abuses and illegalities. Candidate Obama capitalized on this swing and portrayed himself as the champion of civil liberties.

However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the “just following orders” defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.

But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama’s personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush. Indeed, only a few days after he took office, the Nobel committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize without his having a single accomplishment to his credit beyond being elected. Many Democrats were, and remain, enraptured…

As you know, I have commented upon the same phenomenon myself, only not as a bad thing. From my endorsement of his tough talk about Pakistan in 2007 to my praise of his national security continuity right after the election, through my noting the end of the “Kent State Syndrome,” I’ve been pretty laudatory.

What’s really amazing about Obama is that he managed to persuade people before the election, and many after, that he’s this antiwar guy who was going to undo all the supposedly wicked deeds of the Bush administration. I wasn’t hearing that.

But even I was unprepared for how much further Obama would take things than Bush. I guess he’s able to do it because he has the political permission within his own party. Sort of like it took Nixon to go to China, Obama is allowed the latitude to more aggressively pursue the (I’m going to use the term that his base avoids) global War on Terror. As you recall, I made the analogy earlier that Bush was like Sonny Corleone (the blusterer who had trouble getting the job done), and Obama is Michael (who speaks softly and convinces everyone he’s the peaceful don, but wipes out his enemies efficiently without a word of warning). Of course, I don’t see them as heading a criminal enterprise. Others disagree.

It really does put Democrats in a weird place. Some of my most reasonable Democratic friends used to make these extravagant claims about how George W. Bush had trashed the Constitution. They really seemed to believe it. They are quieter now.

The ends meet: a nexus between Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street

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This morning I was listening to a discussion on NPR. Tom Ashbrook kept asking callers whether Occupy Wall Street was this year’s answer to the Tea Party — sort of the other side acting up.

But I was particularly interested in what one of the callers said about a me-too “Occupy Wall Street” demonstration he’d witnessed in Nashville. He said he saw Tea Partiers participating, “in absolute accord with the message, that it’s not about Republicans or Democrats, it’s about corruption…,” referring to the “criminal activity on Wall Street,” which he (the caller) says caused him to lose so much of the value of his home.

One of the guests on the show observed that left or right, the growing objection appears to be with bigness — big gummint, big business, big media.

You can listen here.

Yep. Populism is populism, when you scrape off all the external trappings. To a certain extent, anyway.

‘Hypocrite’ isn’t the right word for Sanford

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There’s a discussion about character going on right now on “Talk of the Nation:”

We’re often taken aback when a respected governor or political candidate, or our own husband or wife, cheats. But psychologist David DeSteno argues that a growing body of evidence shows that everyone — even the most respected among us — has the capacity to act out of character.

… and I was struck by the fact that the segment started off with Mark Sanford as exhibit A.

Inevitably, talk turned to his “hypocrisy.”

I don’t see him as a “hypocrite.” But then, I didn’t see him as a guy who would so brazenly and spectacularly cheat on his wife (or do so on Father’s Day weekend), so what do I know?

But I still don’t see him as a “hypocrite.”

That’s a word that gets bandied about a good deal in our politics, particularly by social liberals talking about social conservatives who turn out to be human (and, as I said, sometimes spectacularly). It tends to reflect a couple of mutually-reinforcing elements of a world view: People who espouse traditional moral values are not only wrong, but they don’t even mean it! I mean, how could they, really? So it’s relevant to discuss.

Andy Griffith’s character on “A Face In the Crowd” was a hypocrite — a super-folksy alleged populist with a deep contempt for the masses. But Sanford — I think he always believed what he espoused, including “family values.” And still does, in his own weird way.

However, there were OTHER things they were saying on the show that were dead on, with regard to Sanford and the rest of us. Yep, he is a towering monument to rationalization. And yep, human character does tend to be “dynamic.” In spite of the root of the word, character is not stamped on us as indelibly as the image on a coin. It’s something you have to work at every day. And just because you act inconsistently with what you say on Wednesday doesn’t mean you didn’t believe it on Tuesday. Or on Thursday.

What Sanford revealed in my own far-from-omniscient opinion was a startling lack of depth, mixed with narcissism.

The narcissism shouldn’t have been a surprise, given his profoundly Randian (as in Ayn Rand, author of “The Virtue of Selfishness”) political views. Actually, it WAS a surprise, but it shouldn’t have been.

As for the lack of depth — the guy’s analysis of himself and what he openly acknowledged as his sin didn’t even go skin deep. He went around apologizing to everybody, but with an unrepentant blandness that seemed to take it as a matter of course that we were obligated to forgive him, while he blithely went about continuing to consort with this mistress. Because, you know, that’s what he wanted to do.

But “hypocrisy”? That both oversimplifies, and misses the mark…

A defense of public broadcasting, from one who knows whereof she speaks

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Sometime today, Senior Correspondent Gwen Ifill of PBS is accepting, on behalf of the PBS Newshour, the 2011 Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

She was to be accompanied by Political Editor David Chalian. I don’t know what he was going to say, but here’s a copy of her prepared remarks:

CRONKITE AWARD CEREMONY
Norman Lear Center
(GWEN IFILL’S PREPARED REMARKS)

University of Southern California
APRIL 26, 2011

ON BEHALF OF JIM LEHRER, JUDY WOODRUFF, LINDA WINSLOW OUR EXECUTIVE PRODUCER AND DAVID CHALIAN, OUR POLITICAL EDITOR…

THANK YOU AGAIN FOR THIS WONDERFUL AWARD, AND FOR ALLOWING US TO JOIN ALL OF THESE AMAZING JOURNALISTS ON THIS STAGE.

IT DOES US ALL GOOD TO SEE THAT – NO MATTER WHAT YOU READ, SEE AND HEAR OUT THERE – SERIOUS JOURNALISM STILL MATTERS.

IT’S ALL I EVER WANTED TO DO, AND I THINK I SPEAK FOR EVERYONE HERE IN SAYING THAT WE ARE DRAWN TO JOURNALISM FOR THE NOBILITY THAT CAN BE FOUND IN TELLING UNTOLD STORIES, OR IN SHEDDING LIGHT RATHER THAN HEAT ON THE OVERTOLD ONES. MOST OF US GOT INTO JOURNALISM TO SAVE THE WORLD…AND THEN REALIZED WE OFTEN HAD TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM US.

I REALIZE I AM PREACHING TO THE CHOIR HERE TODAY, SO I PROBABLY DON’T HAVE TO TELL THE PEOPLE IN THIS ROOM, THIS IS TOUGHER THAN IT SEEMS.

FOR MOST OF US, IT MEANS DOING MORE WITH LESS ON A DAILY BASIS. RESISTING THE LURE OF A CHARLIE SHEEN STORY ONE DAY OR ANOTHER ROYAL WEDDING CURTAIN RAISER ON ANOTHER.

AT THIS POINT IN MY CAREER, I’VE WORKED FOR NEWSPAPERS, AT A COMMERCIAL NETWORK AND NOW AT PUBLIC BROADCASTING, WHERE LIKE CLOCKWORK, WE ARE PERIODICALLY ACCUSED BY THOSE ON THE RIGHT AND THOSE ON THE LEFT
OF BIAS. TOO MANY OF THESE CRITICS DON’T ACTUALLY WATCH OR LISTEN TO WHAT WE DO.

THIS IS WHAT WE DO.

JUDY WOODRUFF AND I TAKE YOU AROUND THE COUNTRY TO GET TO THE HEART OF OUR NATIONAL POLITICAL DEBATE…MARGARET WARNER AND RAY SUAREZ TAKE YOU TO NORTH KOREA AND GUATEMALA AND EGYPT AND SOUTH AFRICA TO TALK ABOUT GLOBAL HEALTH AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES.

ROBIN MCNEIL JUST COMPLETED A SIX-PART SERIES ON AUTISM, DEVOTING THE KIND OF TIME AND CARE TO THE TOPIC THAT FILLS A VOID IN THE DEARTH OF DOCUMENTARY TELEVISION.

AND AFTER 35 YEARS, WE’RE JUST GETTING STARTED. LAST WEEK AT THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE GULF OIL SPILL, WE LOOKED BACK AND COUNTED 232 STORIES WE’D DONE ON THE TOPIC….AND NOT JUST ON THE AIR.

OUR ONLINE OIL SPILL WIDGET WAS EMBEDDED ON MORE THAN 6,000 WEBSITES AROUND THE WORLD AND WAS VIEWED MORE THAN 20 MILLION TIMES.

WE ARE CONVINCED THAT TELLING THE STORY WELL MATTERS – WHETHER IT’S JEFF BROWN’S CONVERSATION LAST YEAR WITH THE WAR PHOTOGRAPHER TIM HETHERINGTON, WHO WAS KILLED LAST WEEK IN LIBYA… OR JOHN MERROW ON EDUCATION… OR PAUL SOLMAN MAKING SENSE OF ECONOMICS… OR HARI SREENIVASAN HONCHOING OUR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COVERAGE.

IF IT SOUNDS LIKE I’M BOASTING, YOU’RE RIGHT. WE ARE JUSTIFIABLY PROUD OF WHAT WE DO, AND ARE CONVINCED THAT EVEN IN A DRASTICALLY SHIFTING MEDIA ENVIRONMENT THERE IS A HUNGER FOR THE WORK WE DO.

WHEN I VISIT COLLEGE CAMPUSES, STUDENTS OFTEN TELL ME “I ONLY WATCH JON STEWART.” AND I TELL THEM: “JON STEWART WATCHES ME.”

NOT TO WORRY. WALTER CRONKITE ONCE TOLD ME HE WATCHED THE PBS NEWSHOUR EVERY NIGHT TOO.

THAT’S BECAUSE JOURNALISM, AND EVEN FAUX JOURNALISM, CAN ONLY FLOURISH WITH A FIRM FOUNDATION.

AT THE PBS NEWSHOUR, OUR FIRM FOUNDATION IS JIM LEHRER. FROM THE DAY HE CREATED THE PROGRAM WITH ROBIN MACNEIL UNTIL NOW, WHEN HE APPLIES HIS CONVICTIONS AND HIS CORE BELIEFS TO THE BROADCAST EVERY SINGLE NIGHT, HE IS OUR GUIDING STAR – TRULY THE CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM.

SO THAT’S WHAT WE DO. THAT’S WHAT MORE OF US CAN DO. AND ON DAYS LIKE TODAY, I AM REMINDED OF HOW MANY MORE WHO ARE DOING IT. AND WELL.

WE MIGHT NOT BE SAVING THE WORLD, BUT AT LEAST WE ARE MAKING IT A MORE UNDERSTANDABLE PLACE TO LIVE IN.

ONCE AGAIN, THANK YOU TO THE NORMAN LEAR CENTER AT USC ANNENBERG FOR THIS MARVELOUS WALTER CRONKITE AWARD.——-

Admittedly, I don’t see PBS as much as I listen to NPR, but to a great extent the praise I often offer to NPR can apply to the television counterpart: I seldom encounter better journalism anywhere. Ms. Ifill mentions the interview with Tim Hetherington… one of the things that consistently amazes me is how comprehensively public broadcasting covers things that just happened (often fleshing it out with a recent interview with the person who is in the news). They present information so thoughtfully, so soberly and completely, that it generally exceeds the best that print can offer. And I can’t say that about anything else on broadcast media.

Check out hunterherring.com

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Hey, folks, go check out the latest addition to my “links” rail at right, hunterherring.com. It’s not only your portal for engaging the DJ services of Hunter Herring Mobile Music, but it’s a great site to listen to while you’re blogging, or doing whatever else you do sitting in front of this screen. (You might have to download RealPlayer, as I did, to hear it, although it might work for you on another application. The sound is great.)

Boomers will find it particularly gratifying. At the moment, he’s playing LaVern Baker’s Tweedle Dee from 1955. Younger folks might tend to dismiss it as “Dance Music for Old People” — but you know, when Nick Hornby coined that phrase, he meant it in a good way. Just turn it on and pay attention, kids; you might learn something.

By way of full disclosure, Hunter is family. His daughter is married to my elder son, and we share a granddaughter. (He is her favorite grandfather — he’s her caretaker during part of the week, splitting the duty with my wife, and she just thinks he’s way cooler.) And his wife, Ginny, works with me at ADCO.

If you’ve ever listened to radio in Columbia, of course, you don’t need me to tell you who Hunter Herring is. From his site:

Hunter is a longtime Columbia/Charlotte radio personality who has spent his 40 year career at great radio stations like WCOS, WNOK, WZLD, WEZC, WMIX, WWMG, and WOMG.

His career in broadcasting has given him experience in music formats ranging from beach to boogie, rock to disco, and top 40 to country, all of which are available for your party.

Let Hunter help you plan the music for your party to ensure a perfect mix for your event.

So give it a listen. (Right now, it’s Chuck Jackson, with “Beg Me.”… No, wait, now it’s Wilson Pickett with “I’m in Love”…) And if you want to listen the old-fashioned way, he’ll be on Magic 98.5 this afternoon at 3, after Shakin’ Dave Aiken.

Oh, wait — now it’s Mary Wells with “The One Who Really Loves You”…

NPR still having a problem with e-mail

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NPR is still having a trouble with e-mail. It doesn’t want to give out its journalists’ addresses.

I know. So last century. My kids don’t even DO e-mail, and haven’t for many years, because it’s so slow and indirect and retro. Or something (I confess I don’t fully understand the problem). It’s as though a film studio were still debating whether to take the plunge into VHS.

Don’t know about you, but a pet peeve of mine is going to anyone’s Web page — a business, a nonprofit, any kind of organization or even a personal endeavor such as a blog — and looking for a way to contact the key individuals, only to hit a wall. No e-mail address. Not even a phone number (for those just a step past smoke signals).

I’m not the only one this bugs. In fact, one of our neighbors right here in Colatown made it into an essay on the subject:

NPR does not publish staff email addresses.

It should.

About once a month someone writes to say they find it arrogant and standoffish for a news organization —that demands access to others — to not offer a common form of communication to its audience.

And it’s not always that a listener wants an email address to write a nasty note.

Sometimes they want to share information. Sometimes they want to ask a question, or even provide information to correct an error. Sometimes, they simply want to say “Nice job” directly to a reporter.

“Today I just wanted to tell the ‘A Blog Supreme’ producers-writers how important the blog has been to me,” wrote George Mack, of Columbia, SC., a listener for 20 years.

“However, there is no way to contact them except to post a public comment or to come to a black hole dialog box like the one I’m using this very moment,” he continued. “I’ve always thought this stand-offish concept was just plain arrogant and it gives rise to negative feelings.”

Right now if someone wants to get in touch with NPR via e-mail, they have to go to the “Contact Us” link and fill out a form. It will go to a news show, my office or an office called “listener services.”…

Amen to that, brother. I hate those forms. Whenever I click “contact us” and get a form to fill out, instead of an actual person’s e-mail address, I feel like the message is “Bug off.” Only with a different word in place of “Bug.” Even if that’s not intended, that’s what I receive.

Yes, I know e-mail is a hassle. It consumes too much time, and if you’re a reporter with a national medium, the flood will be Noahesque. But hey, figure out something. If that impersonal box “works” for managing the flood, it’s only because it discourages people from trying to make contact at all, thus reducing the volume.

Nowadays, public radio doesn’t need to be ticking off the listening, voting public. NPR shows great resourcefulness, thoughtfulness and creativity in presenting the news. Apply some of that to basic communcations, please.

And oh, yes. You can reach me at brad@bradwarthen.com. And I’ll get to it as soon as I can (usually same day). And there’s just me.

Where you can see and hear me in coming days

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This morning, I taped a segment for ETV Radio with Mark Quinn, and while I was doing it, I thought that for once, I’d give y’all a heads-up ahead of time about where you can see and hear me over the next few days. So here goes:

The ETV Radio segment will air on Friday at 1 p.m. Mark and I talked for 15 minutes, mostly about the gubernatorial election. I worried a bit that I did an uncharacteristic thing: Rather than speak as the detached observer the way I usually do on radio, I spoke as the blogger who very much hopes Vincent overcomes the odds. I apologized to Mark for that after, but he said it was OK, so maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought…
Speaking of ETV, a program called “How We Choose” will air on the TV version at 9:30 p.m. Friday, and again on Monday, election eve, at 7 p.m. There are some clips from the program up on the ETV election blog. I was one of a bunch of people interviewed for this, and it was so long ago I don’t know what I said, but it was very Civics 101 stuff about democracy and voting and the like. You know — educational.
Remember that “party politics” primer I did on the city election for the Shop Tart, specially crafted for her particular audience? That was well received, and she wants me to do another, and I have promised her I would. So repeating the promise in writing to y’all is my way of making myself write it and get it to her sometime this week. If I fail, I fail in the world’s eyes, not just the Tart’s…
I’ve manipulated the Health & Happiness schedule so that it will be my turn to do it at the Columbia Rotary Club on Monday, election eve. If I can’t come up with decent political material for that day, I never will. That’s at 1 p.m. at Seawell’s. You have to get a member to host you if you want to be there. (So now, I’ve just put EXTRA pressure on myself to come up with something good. Sheesh. Comedy is hard.)
Nov. 2 — On Election Night, I’ll be on WIS. Judi Gatson has asked me to appear along with Sid Bedingfield (Political analyst from USC) and Douglas Wilson (a blogger at politicsispower.com) to talk election results. I said OK, so guess I won’t be doing my usual roaming that night, but will be in a fixed location. I THINK I’ll be able to blog during that, but if I don’t, and you wonder where I am, turn on the tube.
On Nov. 4th, I’ll be speaking to the SC Telecommunications Association’s Fall Conference at the Radisson, about election results.
On Saturday, Nov. 6, I’m the featured entertainment for the Lower Richland Dem Breakfast out on Garners Ferry Road. They, too, want me to talk about election results.

So, I’m busy doing a lot of stuff besides earning a living and blogging. But you might say that I’m blogging by other means — and of course wherever I go, I give ADCO a plug…

The Juan Williams debacle

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Folks, I’m a bit out of pocket — I’m in Memphis for a wedding, and my Internet access where I’m staying is limited (I may stop by a Starbucks later) — but to give y’all a little something to chew on, I share this email from a reader:

What did you think about Juan Williams being fired from NPR?

I thought that was about as low class as it gets.

1) His boss didn’t have the guts to fire him in person. Got an underling to call him on the phone.

2) Juan didn’t say anything that tens of millions of people in American don’t feel when they get on a plane- that if they see a group of Muslims on the plane, they feel uncomfortable- at least a little bit.

3) Juan didn’t say he liked that feeling. He wasn’t say other people should feel that way. He didn’t say he was proud of it. He was being honest about his feelings.

This country is becoming a place I don’t recognize. You can’t even be honest with your own feelings- in a honest and forthright manner without getting screwed.

Unreal.

Thank you,
Barry

So what do y’all think about all that? Me, I think it’s a ridiculous overreaction by NPR. The explanation of how a rule has been applied here doesn’t seem to add up. The upshot is that NPR has handed FoxNews a propaganda coup in its ideological war with other media — one for which it was willing to pay $2 million.

Which makes me wonder — what do I have to say to get Fox to pay ME that kind of change?

Getting Sirius about Alvin Greene

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OK, it wasn’t such a surprise when NPR wanted to talk with me about SC politics. But this request took me aback a bit:

Hi Brad,
This is Dan Pashman, I produce Whatever with Alexis and Jennifer on the Martha Stewart channel on Sirius. It’s a general interest talk show, and we’d like to invite you on to talk about Alvin Greene. I’m sure you’re very familiar with his story, but the intrigue surrounding it is just starting to break through on the national level, and we’d love to get the local perspective. How did he win the primary? Is this some kind of joke? Is he really as unlikely a candidate as it seems? What are folks in the state saying about him? And are you sure this isn’t some kind of joke? We’d like to do this today at 6 pm eastern, you could do it from a land line phone and it would take about 15 minutes. The show is lighthearted and fun, we do some politics and the hosts are curious about Greene, but it’s definitely not wonky. The hosts also talk a lot about dating and celebrities, etc, so we cover a lot of ground and this interview can definitely have a fun element to it. Please let me know if you’re available.

Thanks,
Dan

Anyway, I’ll be on tomorrow (we moved it back a day) at 6, if you can listen. I can’t not having satellite radio.

By the way, Dan wrote me later to ask if I could answer his questions above so that he could prep the stars of the show. Here’s how I replied:

How did he win the primary?

No one knows. These were all factors in what happened, though:

— No one was paying attention to that race because whoever it was was expected to be a sacrificial lamb and lose to DeMint in the fall.

— The candidate expected to win, Vic Rawl, didn’t campaign all that much. He thought he had it in the bag. And indeed, if you had asked me who was going to win that, I would have said, “Vic Rawl.” Not that I cared. I assumed that Vic Rawl would be the guy to lose to DeMint in the fall, that that was that. (I’ll tell you, I did not vote on that race. I saw Rawl’s name there, and recognized it, but decided I didn’t know enough about him to vote for him — of course, I’m used to knowing more about candidates than most people, and in this case, I hadn’t even met the guy.)

— Alvin Greene’s name came first on the ballot. Never underestimate the power of that in the absence of name recognition.

— “Greene” is considered to be a “black” spelling of the name. So it’s assumed that lots of black voters, not knowing either of these guys, chose him because he sounded like the black guy.

— Bottom line, his winning makes all the sense in the world to Alvin — he ran, right? so why wouldn’t people have voted for him? — and totally blows the minds of everybody else.

Is this some kind of joke?

Not to Alvin Greene. He’s serious as a crutch.

Is he really as unlikely a candidate as it seems?

Yes.

What are folks in the state saying about him?

Democrats are saying as little as possible. Republicans are saying “Greene-Sheheen,” loudly and often. Vincent Sheheen is the Democratic nominee for governor.

And are you sure this isn’t some kind of joke?

Yep. To folks outside the state, and to Republicans inside it, it IS a joke. But not to other South Carolinians. We’ve had enough embarrassment.

Hear me on NPR via the Web if you’d like

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In case you missed it, here’s the link to my interview on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” this afternoon. My part starts 33:45 into it.

I felt like it went well. If y’all disagree, I’m sure you’ll let me know…

The NPR folks said it went well, and want to have me back, which is nice. Finally, I’ve broken my string of getting bumped by bigger news on NPR. Even when Michele Norris came to my office and interviewed me personally (and SAID it went well, although maybe she was just being nice), I got bumped.

So it was good to make in on the air this time, and I look forward to opportunities to do it again. I love doing radio. TV’s fun, too, but you have to keep thinking about sitting up straight and such. With radio, you just shut your eyes, open your mouth and TALK, and keep talking. Which is just brain candy to me.

The HISTORIC part is the national media factor

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Just got a call from NPR; they want me on the radio this afternoon at 2:20 to talk SC politics, even though I told them I wasn’t really paying that much attention yesterday to the stuff THEY were watching, but was following runoffs that were actually in doubt.

Which gets me to my point. As I said this morning over breakfast to Rep. Dynamite (a.k.a. Anton Gunn), we are about to see something we have NEVER before seen in South Carolina, and I’m not talking about an Indian woman or a black man having the GOP nomination.

For the first time ever, national media coverage is going to be a significant factor in who becomes governor of South Carolina.

If you’re Vincent Sheheen, this has got to worry you even more than the usually-decisive advantage that Republicans tend to enjoy in statewide elections. That can be overcome, as Jim Hodges demonstrated at the peak of the GOP ascension, before the party started falling apart squabbling.

But the national media factor is likely to be insurmountable.

Nikki Haley does not have to spend one thin dime on TV ads. She really doesn’t. She’s going to be on national TV, on the 24/7 cable channels, day in and day out. That means she will be on every TV in the state, every market, to a saturation point. And the tone will be gushing, breathless, wondering, hagiographic. The tone will be one of delight, and grotesquely simplistic: Look, she’s a woman! Look, she’s ethnic! She’s Sarah Palin! She’s Bobby Jindal.

Never mind that Sarah Palin is as vapid and empty a political celebrity as any to come along in a generation if not longer, the political equivalent of Charro — the celebrity who is famous for being famous. Never mind that when Bobby Jindal finally got up to bat in the bigs after all kinds of buildup about what an exciting new player he was — giving the Republican “response” live — he went down swinging at bad pitches.

One thing about national media is that they are ubiquitous. They saturate our lives. We don’t have to take action to consume them; they consume us. Every citizen in this country who is not directly involved in state or local government knows vastly more about national politics than about local and state — or at least thinks he does. Unfortunately, the coverage is so superficial and thin that the consumer’s level of understanding is unlikely to be impressive. But there’s just so MUCH of it.

And that is made for Nikki. Nikki is a telegenic young woman who SHINES as long as nothing goes deeper than her being a woman, being a minority, being fresh, being engaging, having a great smile. Of course, she says she wants to talk issues, such as her biggie, transparency. And no one wants to break the spell of her being just so darned exciting to ask, “Transparency? OK, how about that $40k you pulled down for having connections? And (whisper this) how about those public-account e-mails you won’t release?” But national media coverage doesn’t dig down even that far, much less far enough to challenge her understanding of, say, education policy. Or economic development. Or anything else that matters in one who would be the governor who replaces the most disengaged, apathetic governor in our history. You know, her political mentor.

And if you’re Vincent Sheheen, what can you do to overcome that wide, thin, wall-to-wall, breathless coverage of your opponent? Frankly, I can’t think of anything he CAN do. But I hope he knows of something.

We’re making one heck of an international impression

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It’s just not the sort a sane person would want to make.

As I was getting out of a vehicle to walk to the State House right after lunch today, I got a call on the Blackberry from Paris. Caller ID said the number was … well, there were 11 digits. To summarize the phone call, I quote from the e-mail I found when I got back to the office:

Good Morning M. Warthen,

I am a french journalist, working for a french national private media
called Radio Classique.
I am working today on a story about Alvin Greene and the democrat
candidacy.
It would be very interesting for me to talk to you about that and may be
doing a short interview by phone.
Is it possible ?
It would be great.
May be within two hours or tomorrow morning your time ?

It would be great and very interesting.

thank you very much.

Best regards.

Marc Tedde
Radio Classique

I asked if he also wanted to talk about all the Nikki Haley stuff. He didn’t know about any of that. Just as well.

Just what South Carolina needs.

Anyway, we’re going to do the interview tomorrow morning — afternoon, his time, morning our time. I’m going to let him call me again, rather than vice versa, I assure you.

Talkin’ ’bout the Tolly-Bon

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Was listening to the radio this morning — NPR, probably (I only listen to music on commercial stations) — and the announcer was talking about the pending confab between Presidents Obama and Karzai, and a mention was made of Mr. Karzai’s dealings with the Taliban.

Only the announcer didn’t exactly say “Taliban.” He took a sort of half-hearted stab at pronouncing it the way President Obama does, “Tolly-Bon.”

Here’s the thing about that. Having grown up speaking Spanish as well as English, I approve of people pronouncing words from other languages properly (personal peeve: English-speakers pronouncing “llama” as “lama”).

But when the attempt is lame, it grates. And the president, with his extremely normal American accent, simply does not pronounce “Taliban” the way a man from the Mideast or central Asia would. He sounds like… well, a Texan speaking Spanish. OK, not THAT bad, but it sounds odd, and it’s distracting, and it causes you to miss the rest of what he’s saying while you’re going, “TOLLY-BON?”

Actually, truth be told, it can be distracting even when it’s done perfectly. I always sort of go huh? when, at the end of a report delivered in perfectly accentless broadcast English, I hear the reporter sign off as “Mandalit del Barco.” That’s because she pronounces it with a perfect, extra-intense Spanish accent. And obviously both are natural to her, but it’s still distracting. It’s as though an actor were speaking a line with an Italian accent, and in the middle pronounced two words as a German.

It’s also a bit — showoffy. Because not many people can do it, perhaps. I could have, when I was young and fluent in both. But as I’ve gotten older, it can take me several minutes to get the muscles of my mouth warmed up to read Spanish properly (which I have to do from time to time to proclaim the Gospel in Spanish at Mass). If I try to pronounce “Mandalit del Barco” properly in the middle of a sentence in English, my tongue would trip over my front teeth, and I wouldn’t be able to get any of it out. It’s not so much the “Mahn-da-LEET,” which even a Texan could almost say correctly, but getting the L and especially the R right in “del Barco.” I can’t represent the difference phonetically. They’re just pronounced completely differently in Spanish. The tongue does tricks it’s never called on to do in English. (Here’s a link to a report by her that illustrates some of what I’m saying. It starts with a gringo anchor introducing her, saying her name with a lame American accent, then she goes on to report a story about recent immigrants with a fairly smooth, nondistracting shift between words like “sombrero” and English words — which I guess contradicts my point. But when she signs off at the end, as usual, she really punches the correct pronunciation of her name. It’s like she takes several steps back and gets a running start at it. And maybe that‘s what grabs my attention. Whatever the accent, you seldom hear an announcer so overpronouncing his or her own name.)

Anyway, I have thoughts like those every time I hear her. Which is distracting. I suppose there’s something to be said about the arrogant British habit of pronouncing everything, every foreign name or word, with an English accent, and foreign sensibilities be damned. It at least makes for a smoother delivery, with fewer cognitive bumps in the road. (But, as I said in the previous parenthetical, one CAN pronounce things correctly without distracting, if one is really good. Maybe Ms. del Barco just has an ego thing about her name; I don’t know.)

Something just occurred to me: Maybe the president does that Tolly-Bon thing as a very subtle way of having his cake and eating it. Maybe he makes a lame stab at pronouncing it “correctly” in order to reach out to folks in other parts of the world, but does it with a painfully American accent so as not to sound too alien at home. Could it be?