Not until I read this press release from PBS — and looked at the copy of The Economist that came today — did I realize that Doug Ross’ guy Ron Paul had an alternative convention last week.
Anyway, here’s the PBS item, plus video, for Doug and the rest of you Paulistas out there…
I‘ve got this thing about demonstrators: They turn me off, big-time. Pro, anti, protester or counter-protester, street theater just leaves me cold.
It doesn’t matter whether I agree with them (pro-lifers waving bloody pictures) or disagree (Code Pink waving their bloody hands), they generally appall me. Interrupting people is interrupting people. Shock is shock. There’s nothing redeeming about it.
Peaceful, dignified marchers, showing respectful solidarity in a cause, are one thing. But screamers indulging the urge to Act Out are another altogether.
Perhaps the moment that tore it for me and protesters forever occurred in 1982, when my newspaper was sponsoring a U.S. Senate campaign debate. I drew the duty of explaining to the pro-life demonstrators — led by a woman who was a friend of mine and was in the folk choir with me at church — why they could only come in if they promised not to disrupt. The woman, my friend, was screaming in my face, transported by her mission. And you know what? I don’t remember abortion being much of an issue in that race. Certainly, nothing she was doing helped further discussion on the topic.
Angry appeals to emotion militate against rational political decisions. They get in the way; they erect new barriers to communication where there were already too many to begin with.
Over-the-top misbehavers like, say, Code Pink only create sympathy for the objects of their wrath. I always wonder, what is the point for them, besides satisfying some primal urge to attract attention? Whatever they think they’re doing, I’ll tell you what they’re accomplishing: Zero. Zip. Nada.
At least one of my children disagrees with me about this, by the way: She says that because I have the outlets I do, I can’t possibly understand the frustrations of those who can’t, for instance, bring the people they disagree with in for a sit-down chat. I get the point. But I’m pretty sure that even if I weren’t the editorial page editor of the state’s largest newspaper, people who prefer shouting to reasoning would still turn me off. And I strongly suspect that they turn off more people than they inspire.
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:
Here’s a longer list of such sites. Enjoy.
Did you ever sort of suspect that the Hillary Clinton campaign would never give up — that never-say-die
supporters would still be found 40 years from now holed up in a bunker somewhere, like those Japanese soldiers who still wandered out of the jungle on islands in the Pacific for decades after WWII? (Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi, right, was found in 1972 in a Guam jungle,
where he had been living on shrimp, fish and nuts — with the emphasis
on "nuts" — since 1943.)
Yeah, so did I.
Well, we were right. I got a release today from a group called JustSayNoDeal.com, to this effect:
June 18, 2008
MEDIA ALERT
Just Say No Deal Asks Obama Supporters To: “Show Some Class”
Tasteless Behavior Like the Booing of Public Officials Has NO Place in Our Election Process
– Online and Nationwide— JustSayNoDeal.com, a coalition of voters, individual activists, blogs, PACs and grassroots organizations, reacts to the scene on Monday night in Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena when Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm received a deafening chorus of boos at her mention of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Moments later former Vice President Al Gore experienced similar jeering when he referred to Senator John McCain.
Just Say No Deal Coalition members will not tolerate such offensive and disrespectful conduct from supporters of Senator Obama aimed at any individual— whether they be an elected official or a member of the community at large, and the Just Say No Deal organization will not align itself with any candidate that permits this shameful behavior to be exhibited in any forum.
During this lengthy primary process Senator Clinton and many of her 18 million supporters have endured pointedly hurtful behavior and vulgar attacks by unruly and inappropriate backers of Senator Obama in public arenas and in new media outlets. The most prevalent arena of these assaults has been on the most recognized sites within the blogosphere.
Concerned citizens continue to break their silence to express their dissatisfaction with party leaders and the short-circuiting of the nominating process. The Just Say No Deal portal offers those voters a plethora of voting strategies, calls-to-action and blogpostings to guide their general election decision-making. In doing so, they reclaim their voices and vow to Just Say No Deal!
You can, if you wish, take this group at its word that it’s just about being fair and polite toward "any individual— whether they be an elected official or a member of the community at large," and believe it’s not about Hillary. But you can’t do that with some of the sites to which JustSayNoDeal.com provides links, such as:
This rich vein just goes on and on — dozens of such sites. Some of y’all who have more time on your hands than I do should browse through them and share some of the nuggets with the rest of us.
Nobody could make this up. And the thing is, you get the sense the authors of these sites are not really trying to be funny, although many succeed at being Hillaryous.
But don’t tell them I said that. Some of these folks seem the type who don’t appreciate a little good-natured ribbing.
First off, I should say that this is PRET-ty weird. If you will be offended by extremely ironic humor in the representation of some pretty grim events of recent history, you shouldn’t watch the video. I found a lot of it offensive myself. But if you are morbidly fascinated by how the other half (the half that has LOTS of time to waste, enough to shoot hundreds of photographs of hamburgers in various poses) expresses itself, you might want to glance at this.
One of our regulars sent me the clip as an e-mail, so I won’t say who it was, but here’s how the thing was explained:
Food Fight is an abridged history of American-centric war, from World War II to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict. Watch as traditional comestibles slug it out for world domination in this chronologically re-enacted smorgasbord of aggression.
There is a cheat sheet for those of you who want to have your food allusions explained, although it’s recommended that you try to follow it on your own first.
There is also, for the history-deprived, a breakdown of the battles and events depicted, at the bottom of this Web page. As you will see, the humor that is employed in this animated feature is rather, um, tasteless. Even literally — the food that is depicted is quite unappetizing. But I share it anyway — you certainly don’t have to watch it.
A colleague calls this story in the Charleston paper to my attention. Golly, maybe Mark Sanford’s right; maybe our legislative leaders exercise no spending restraint whatsoever — with their own money, that is…
Some middle-aged men blow big bucks on a sports car, a bass boat or a nice set of golf clubs, but the man who some consider the most powerful in South Carolina government had something else in mind.
Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell recently spent almost $30,000 on a reproduction of a bronze cannon, complete with a Palmetto engraving.
"Anybody will tell you a bronze gun has just got a different sound to it," he said. "I knew this gun would make noise, and it does. It is a loud, talking gun. … It really splits the air."…
If you can stand to read more, here’s the link.
Taking off on the subject of this recent post, I thought I’d hark back to a column I wrote in 1998, way before this blog was ever thought of. In it, I set forth my vision of what it might be like if the Midlands had the mass transit amenities of New York or Washington or even Atlanta:
Imagine: Say it’s a few years from now, and you live in Lexington and work in Columbia. You drive the mile or so to the station and leave your car in a parking lot. You take your seat and ride the old Southern line that parallels Highway 1 into the city. Call it the A line.
Despite all the stops, you get downtown in less time than it takes to drive, while getting ahead on work or (better yet) reading the paper. You change trains at the Vista Center station near the new arena and conference center.
Say you work where I do, near Williams-Brice Stadium (and why wouldn’t you; this is my dream, after all). You take the C line down one of the very tracks that used to frustrate you in your driving days (if you can’t beat the trains, join them). You get off within a block of work.
A few hours later, when you have a lunch appointment in Five Points, you take a quick ride back up to Vista Center, then through the underground stretch beneath the State House complex and the USC campus on the eastern reach of the A line.
Need to shop after work? Take the C all the way out to Columbiana, or the D along Two-Notch to Columbia Mall. (Where does the B line go? Out toward Lake Murray, which means it runs between 378 and the Saluda River, right by my house.)
Now that there’s so much more growth out to the northeast I suppose we could extend the D farther out. The C would be longer, too. And the A might need a spur that would run out Garners Ferry. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Yeah, I was dreaming then and I’m dreaming now — like the guy in that movie "Singles," who kept talking about his mass transit dream (in Seattle, I think it was), and anyone he told it to would say, "Yeah, but I love my car."
But it’s a nice dream. Here’s the rest of that column, by the way — but I already gave you the relevant part.
Earlier this week I got a message from JESUSIN2008.COM, which called my attention to this recent piece in USA Today. We’re not talking about the Son of God here, but a personal construct of the site’s creator, Stephen Heffner.
Heffner, a fallen-away Catholic, picks and chooses his definition of Jesus, and invites you to do the same — a very American, and most unCatholic, pastime, by the way. Isn’t that pretty much the history of the Reformation — groups of folks going around inventing their own Jesuses? (OK, maybe not the liturgical churches, but don’t stop me; I’m on a rhetorical roll.)
Mr. Heffner is highly selective in building his Jesus. "There are only three rules on the site: no miracles, no preaching and no rude behavior," USA Today reports. No raising the dead, no Sermon on the Mount, no driving the money-changers from the Temple. None of that actual stuff that Jesus would do.
Visitors to the site are invited to pick running mates. In a quick glance, I didn’t notice any nominations for St. Peter. Obviously, no campaign consultants visit this site. Simon Peter would be loyal, would have that common touch that would help the ticket, and would be able to play the traditional veep "goon" role on the opposition with awesome effectiveness.
Of course, you don’t have to go to … well, wherever Mr. Heffner lives … to create your own Jesus (rather than, as most theologians would have it, letting Jesus redefine you). Adam Fogle just filed a TPS Report about a congressional candidate right here in S.C. who’s doing just that. Isn’t that special?
Before, I thought him the most prosaic of candidates. Now, each picture of him stirs me to poetry — or something.
Here’s my latest:
Cynosure of eyes
They hung on every word
But not anymore
There are different ways of looking at Mitt’s departure. And when I say different, I mean different. The WSJ has a blog that’s kept count on how many lawyers there were in the race, and has been striking them off the list one by one. (I called it up because the headline, "Mitt Romney (Harvard Law ‘75) Suspends Campaign," seemed an odd thing to be stressing at this moment.)
But what’s odder still is that this "Law Blog" has invited readers to submit haiku about each lawyer-candidate who has dropped out. Some samples:
Pony with one trick,
Don’t forget Nine Eleven,
Nine Eleven’s it.They called him “tortoise”
But now the man with no hair
Has got out of ours
They call the form "bye-ku." Here’s my first attempt at one for Mitt:
French cuffs, perfect coif
He offered a ‘turnaround’
We didn’t want one
I’m sure you can do better. And no, I don’t know offhand whether he actually does wear French cuffs. Want to see my literary license?
Constantly bemused as I am by the odd coalitions that form the "left" and "right" in this country — coagulations of folks whose goals seem widely disparate to me — I am even more confused by the alliances one finds on the fringes of those wings.
So it is that, when I receive an e-mail containing an essay headlined "The NAACP is the Klan with a tan," I find myself wondering, Why is this being offered as though it somehow falls within the realm of ChristianExodus.org? Mind you, I could not find the article starting at the Web site itself, but the HTML message I received presented it within that context.
What’s that all about? Is it that both arise from separatist impulses, or what?
Got another nice message today from a nice person who is glad I’ve been advocating for single-payer, but disappointed in me for dismissing the viability of Dennis Kucinich’s candidacy:
I want to thank you for making the case for single payer healthcare and pointing out that none of the candidates except for Dennis Kucinich is advocating any real reform of our broken system. I take exception, however, to your suggestion that Kucinich is not a "viable" candidate. Polls consistently show that Kucinich’s views on the issues are most in line with what Americans want: out of Iraq, single-payer healthcare, helping American workers and industry instead of China, immigration reform, support for small family farms and the middle class, etc. And the UFO stuff is really getting old. Why doesn’t anyone in the media mention that Ronald Reagan, beloved by many, also reported seeing an unidentified flying object? Neither he nor Kucinich claimed to have an "alien encounter." Yet you and the rest of the mainstream media insist on trying to marginalize Dennis Kucinich. Why? He’s a man of courage and integrity with bold ideas, and he’s only "nonviable" as long as you and other members of the media keep SAYING he is. It’s time that people started taking Kucinich seriously. He’s our best and only hope for this country, and he has my unwavering support and my vote. – Anne O’Berry
Two quick points:
And if you can’t, here’s an excerpt:
As they sat down to a dinner, Mr. Kucinich spotted a light in the distance, to the left of Mount Rainier. Mr. Costanzo thought it was a helicopter.
But Mr. Kucinich walked outside to the deck to look through the telescope that he had bought Ms. MacLaine as a house gift. After a few minutes, Mr. Kucinich summoned the other two: "Guys, come on out here and look at this."…
After a few minutes, the lights moved closer and it became apparent that they were actually three charcoal-gray, triangular craft, flying in a tight wedge. The girlfriend remembers each triangle having red and green lights running down the edges, with a laser-like red light at the tail. Mr. Costanzo recalls white lights, but no tail….
The craft held steady in midair, for perhaps a minute, then sped away, Mr. Costanzo says. "Nothing had landed," he says. "No strange beings had disembarked. No obvious messages were beamed down. When they were completely out of sight, we all looked at each other disbelieving what we had seen."
At Mr. Kucinich’s suggestion, they jotted down their impressions and drew pictures to memorialize the event. Mr. Kucinich kept the notes, according to Ms. MacLaine, who said he promised her recently that he would try to find them….
Get a load of this… someone just sent me a link to some guy who thinks my couple of short posts about Ron Paul and libertarianism are a big deal. To get the full effect, you should click on the link. But here’s a sample:
Ron Paul’s growing popularity is extremely annoying to those on the left. And sometimes their annoyance gets out-of-control, as evidenced by the reaction from Brad Warthen, editorial page editor of The State, Columbia, South Carolina.
Maybe I’m reading that wrong, but I think this guy actually associates me with the left. But in case that’s not rich enough for you, it gets better:
…remember that Warthen, like many of today’s journalists, was born somewhere
the mid-1950’s to the late-1960’s. During the heyday of ABC, CBS and NBC, these journalists were kids in PJs eating cereal in front of the TV. This is how they learned about America and where they formulated their narrow views about the first half of the 20th century. Network television reporting informed them what was right and what was wrong and defined what the government’s role in appeasing the demands of fringe groups and "improving society" should be.
This guy actually seems to believe that there was a time in which I actually watched TV "news."
That’s life for you. Every day you learn something new … about yourself.
First, let me apologize for using "Ron Paul" in a headline for a second time this week. I realize that it’s a cheap traffic driver, like putting cheesecake photos of female celebs on your site.
But the previous time I invoked the nation’s most popular libertarian, a lot of those who were drawn hither by Google expressed puzzlement that I thought the phrase "freewheeling fun" was a hoot when applied to libertarianism.
This still doesn’t quite explain it, but it at least shows that some libertarians are fully aware of the dark, grim, foreboding side of their worldview, which tends to be the one I generally see. I’m cleaning my desk and IN box today, and I run across a copy of The Heartlander, a newsletter put out by The Heartland Institute, which describes itself as "A nonprofit organization devoted to discovering, developing, and promoting free-market solutions to social and economic problems".
The lead article in the latest newsletter is written by the organization’s president, Joseph L. Bast, and it begins:
We all have some friends and acquaintances who seem congenitally to be optimists and others who were born pessimists.
Among libertarians – for whom extremism is never a vice – the
division is especially sharp, and pessimists outnumber optimists by a
wide margin. I know plenty of libertarians who believe we are at the
gates of hell, carried there in a charred handbasket by people whose
names change over time (sometimes “Clinton,” sometimes “Bush”) but who
always walk in the same direction. Are they right?
That’s what I’m talking about. What I usually hear when libertarians speak is the cry of those "who believe we are at the
gates of hell, carried there in a charred handbasket…"
What I don’t hear is the voices of those few (according to Mr. Bast, they are indeed in the minority) sunny optimists among libertarians — although his article is an attempt to foster that attitude. And his list of things to feel good about strike me as mostly unhappy news (such as "President Bush vetoed a proposed expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program"), but then I’m not his intended audience.
I’ll keep my eyes peeled for the next issue of The Heartlander. Maybe I’ll find the "freewheeling fun" of libertarianism in that one.
Had to laugh at this passage in this WashPost story about the Ron Paul phenomenon, which was brought to my attention by an e-mail from a libertarian organization:
More than at any other time over the past two decades, Americans are
hungering for the politics and freewheeling fun of libertarianism…
It really said that. Go look. "Freewheeling fun." Maybe that’s why I don’t get libertarianism. I look at it and see a gray, dull, monotonous, seething, dispiriting resentment. Gripe, bitch, moan, especially about taxes — that’s libertarianism to me. That is, if you don’t mind my using the "b-word" in its verb form.
I don’t go to politics looking for a good time, but if I did, I’d probably pick the liberal Democrats. If I were looking to start a business, I’d hang with the Republicans. If I were looking to be an ideologically rigid, antisocial grouch who constantly told the rest of the world to go (expletive) itself, I’d be a libertarian. Not to cast aspersions or anything, or deal in flat stereotypes. I’m sure there’s much more to libertarians than that, just as there is to everyone. But "freewheeling fun?" That cracked me up.
At last night’s debate, Tim Russert sought to have fun at Dennis Kucinich’s expense, and succeeded.
"Did you see a UFO?" asked the immoderate moderator. "I did," said Mr. Kucinich, and the place burst into laughter. He struggled on to explain, "It
was (an) unidentified flying object, OK. It’s like — it’s unidentified. I saw something."
If you see an object in the sky and you don’t know what it is, it’s an unidentified flying object. But you see, Superficial America — the version of America that exists on television, on blogs, at press conferences, and throughout political campaigns — has officially decided that Dennis the Menace, whom we all know as flaky to begin with, has duly outdone himself by admitting that he saw a UFO at (and this is the really rich part) Shirley Maclaine’s house. Everybody laugh now.
Yeah, Dennis is a fringe kind of guy, but this is unfair. It’s part of the dumbing-down and oversimplifying function of mass media, and people who live their lives as extension of said media. Call them the Blathering Classes. This shorthand culture demands that everyone fit into an assigned cubicle, preferably one of two choices in each case: Left or Right, Democrat or Republican, winner or loser, conservative or liberal, black or white, yes or no.
We saw the same foolishness at work in the way the other candidates jumped on Hillary Clinton for having answered a question about Gov. Spitzer’s immigrant driver’s license proposal pretty much the way I would:
"You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays ‘gotcha.’ It makes a lot of sense… what is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a serious problem. We have failed, and George Bush has failed. Do I think this is the best thing for any governor to do? No. But do I understand the sense of real desperation, trying to get a handle on this — remember, in New York; we want to know who’s in New York, we want people to come out of the shadows. He’s making an honest effort to do it; we should have passed immigration reform.
John Edwards, who would never be accused of holding a nuanced or complex few of any emotional issue, pounced:
"Unless I missed something, Sen. Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes, uh, just a few minutes ago. And, I think this is a real issue… for the country. I mean, America is looking for a president who will say the same thing, who will be consistent, who will be straight with them.
To my view, a person who explains that this is not an issue with a simple answer, and explains why — which Mrs. Clinton did — is the one who is being straight with us. To expand on something I’ve said before, anyone who thinks there’s a simple answer on this one is either not really thinking, or is NOT being straight with us.
Obama was no better:
I was confused on Sen. Clinton’s answer. I, I, I can’t tell whether she was for it or against it, and I do think that is important. One of the things that we have to do in this country is to be honest about the challenges that we face.
Excuse me? She just did that.
Joe Biden said he wasn’t running against Hillary Clinton; he was running to be leader of the free world, a job he’s actually prepared for over lo these many years. Maybe that’s why he’s doing so poorly; Superficial America has no patience for that sort of thing.
Do you sometimes get e-mail that makes you think somebody is sending you up? I certainly do, and I’m not just talking about the stuff I get from the S.C. Democratic and Republican parties….
Today’s prize-winner is in a category of its own. What do you say about a developer who wants to put up a "Tower of Invincibility" — I am not making this up! — in downtown Washington, D.C.?
Oh, wait, I’m not finished. What do you further say when the design of the building tempts you to say such things as "Is that the design or are you just glad to see me?" and "What — the Washington monument wasn’t phallic enough for you?"
I’m just getting warmed up… the developer says he got the idea to build the tower from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Really. If the Maharishi dreamed this up, maybe there was something to those rumors about Mia Farrow.
Finally, the developer is asking the public to tell him where he should put his tower. Honestly — you can’t make up stuff like this. I can’t, anyway.
… As if that were necessary. I just got this from the Dodd campaign:
FYI – In case you missed it, MSNBC reported in its First Read that Chris Dodd earned a vote from Markos Moulitsas, founder of the influential Daily Kos, in a recent straw poll.
KOS VOTES FOR DODDFrom NBC’s Domenico Montanaro
We reported earlier that Daily Kos held a Democratic presidential straw poll Sept. 24. Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas said he voted for someone and had the site’s viewers vote on who they thought he voted for. Turns out he voted for Dodd.Kos: "I voted for Chris Dodd. Only 22% of you got that right? I thought it’d be more obvious than that. Not that this means he’s likely to get my vote in February. I don’t throw away my votes, so unless he’s become surprisingly competitive in January, I’ll be looking elsewhere. It just means he really outshone the other candidates these past few weeks and made me think, for the first time in a while, ‘THIS is how I want my nominee to sound.’
"Oh, and I won’t do an ‘endorsement’ in this race. I assume you have your own brains to guide you in that process."
Just what we need: A candidate that a self-proclaimed prophet of the loony left thinks is shiny.
A colleague got this in a piece of e-fanmail last night:
Enjoyed the op-ed piece on Gov. Sanford. Ron Paul suggested he would
be a great running mate during his stop in Greenville/Spartanburg on
7-21-07.
I guess, when you don’t have a prayer of getting the nomination, you are free to fantasize about one’s ticket, and not bother with any of that "balancing" stuff that mainstream candidates worry over so.
But picture it if you can: A general election campaign that won’t spring for hotels — two guys living out of a 1993 Dodge van, each sleeping uneasily on his respective side of the futon, waking up each morning to accuse each other crabbily of spending too much on signage.
Yeah, that’s the ticket…