Category Archives: Personal

Yes, I DO have a job, thank you very much

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Where does Superman go when he’s not saving Lois and Jimmy? Well, sometimes he’s hammering out a story for Perry White in order to uphold his cover. Sure, he can write at super-speed, but not when others in the newsroom are watching. And sometimes they must see him being Clark Kent to believe in that identity.

So it is with me. I can’t blog ALL the time, and sometimes I’m actually working for a living.

“What? You? Work!?!?” you say, your voice rising in pitch on that last word, as did Maynard G. Krebs’.

Yes, indeed, and you shouldn’t be so shocked. I have been known to do work frequently. I even used to do it when I was with the newspaper, even though I was “in the newspaper business, where it is such an important part of the ethics that you should never seem to be working,” as Jake Barnes so rightly noted.

What am I doing now? Well, I’m in the ad game. I’ve joined ADCO, a full-service advertising and marketing firm here in Columbia. I’ve been ADCO’s director of communications/public relations for quite some time now. I joined in mid-February.

So why haven’t I mentioned it before? Well, it’s not like I’ve made a secret of it. I’ve announced it in some public forums, such as when I’m speaking to civic groups (they gave me a big hand at Rotary when I told them, probably because they were thinking, “Never thought he’d get a job.”). But mostly I haven’t done it because ADCO is undergoing a lot of very exciting changes (see how I’m learning the flack lingo?), and I sort of wanted to wait until all the pieces were in place. There are three big things happening with ADCO as I type this:

  1. This year is our 20th anniversary, since Lanier Jones and Brian Murrell started the company in 1990.
  2. Over the last couple of months we’ve been putting together a new (very exciting!) venture with Periodthree, a Web design and development firm. Gene Crawford and his gang have physically moved into the building with us here at 1220 Pickens, and will henceforth be known as ADCO Interactive. This greatly expands what ADCO can do on the Web.
  3. The addition of Yours Truly. This, of course, is a big thrill for everyone, especially the aforementioned Mr. Truly. What will I be doing? Oh, this and that. Business development, for one. Writing stuff (such as some of the copy for the new Web site). Marketing consulting (which is remarkably like what I did at the newspaper — you’d be surprised; it’s all about shaping message). But the very coolest thing, as far as y’all are concerned, is that Lanier and Brian and Lora and the gang very much encourage me to continue doing the blog. Not many jobs I looked at over the past year would have encouraged that. In fact, most potential employers shuddered at the thought, which makes ADCO rather special.

The Period Three — that is to say, ADCO Interactive — team has been working on a new Web site that will incorporate all of these changes. For instance, if you go look at the old site, you won’t find me or any of the new Interactive folks. The new one goes live in a couple of weeks. So I haven’t wanted to refer you to it until all that was ready.

Also, if I told y’all I had a job, I’d have to go rewrite my lede on my “About” page, and I haven’t thought of anything I like as much as “Brad Warthen is an unemployed newspaperman, until he finds something else to be.” It’s way existential. I think it ranks up there with “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” Or “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Or “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” You get the idea.

Call me Ishmael.

But what the hey; I’ll worry about that later. I thought I’d go ahead and scoop the new ADCO Web site, if only by a bit.

By the way, to address what I’m sure you’re wondering about, this is just like “Mad Men.” Except that as I type this in my office, I’m drinking a Samuel Adams Summer Ale rather than a martini (I am not making this up — Gene and the gang are celebrating the fact that ConvergeSE happens tomorrow, and I “just happened” to step out of my office just as they were opening a few bottles in the corridor). And I’m the only one who dresses like it’s 1962. In fact, one of the Web gurus here for ConvergeSE just said “nice tie” to me in the hall — and it’s really not one of my nicer ties (hey, I know when these hepcats are being ironic; I’m way perceptive). And if you ask one of the young women in the office to fetch coffee, she just doesn’t hop to it the way they do for Don Draper. I figure I’m not saying it with the right tone or something.

But other than all that, it’s just like “Mad Men.” And I’m really getting into it.

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.

Big Pharma should be paying me to do this

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I’m conducting an experiment.

I just took some extra-strength Tylenol that expired in 2002. (Maybe I should have stuck to the non-alcoholic “beer” the way Thad Viers did at “Pub Politics” last night — although actually I think this is more of a sinus congestion thing.)

So far I haven’t keeled over. No hallucinations. I haven’t grown a third arm or anything. Wait…. no, that was nothing.

If I can get some funding from Tylenol, I’ll write up the results, assuming there are any…

How’s the turnout where YOU are?

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Note how empty my polling place was this morning at 10:50 a.m. Of course, this wasn’t exactly morning rush hour, and it was before the busy lunch hour, but still. Take a look at the pictures back here to see what it looked like on Election Day 2008 at the Quail Hollow precinct. In a big-turnout election, it would have taken me an hour of standing in the queue outside before I got to the doorway where I took the picture above.

But the poll workers said this was good turnout for a state primary. How good was it? At 10:55, when I left, there had been 218 voters in the Republican primary, and 31 (including me) choosing a Democratic ballot (for which I felt like I had to mutter an excuse along the lines of “I’m just fed up with those Republicans this year” — like they cared or something).

I disenfranchised myself for ONE positive vote, and it was worth it

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On the day of the Republican presidential primary in January 2008, I dropped by the office to check on things, and wandered through the newsroom to see what they knew, if anything.

I was wearing one of those “I Voted” stickers that the Palmetto Project gives out to encourage civic engagement. I’ve always proudly worn one on election days as a visible symbol of being one who cares enough to make the effort, without revealing anything inappropriate (for a newspaper editor) about how I voted.

But John Monk remarked upon it, saying, “I see you voted Republican.” Dang! I had completely forgotten the insane fact that the parties had insisted upon having separate primaries a week apart (yet another reason to hate parties). Flustered, I just said, “Well, of course I did.” If I had thought there was any danger of Barack Obama losing the Democratic primary, I would have had a dilemma on my hands. But while I thought McCain would win the GOP contest, I wasn’t sure of it, and I was damned if I was going to fail to do my bit to prevent my state from committing the travesty it had in 2000, when it gave George W. Bush to the world. It just had never occurred to me not to vote in that primary.

Of course, if you live in the Quail Hollow precinct in Lexington County, you’re accustomed to voting in Republican primaries, if only because that’s the only way you get any choices at all. This morning when I asked for a Democratic ballot, I could not remember ever having done so before since I’ve lived there.

And of course, as a result of taking that ballot, I was disenfranchised in terms of who will be my congressman, my lieutenant governor, my treasurer, my attorney general, my SC House member, and my county councilman. In every one of those, there was no Democratic contest, and in two of them (treasurer and county council) no Democrat at all; in those two this WAS the election (and in several of the others it might as well be).

But it was worth it to cast a positive vote. Yeah, I guess I could have held my nose and hoped that Henry McMaster would govern the way he has served as attorney general, rather than the way he has run as a candidate, and thereby minimized Nikki’s margin of victory. But by taking a Democratic ballot, I actually got to vote for someone I actually want to be my governor, without any reservations. And as I’ve said over and over again, electing the right governor is FAR more important than what happens with any other office. We have got to turn this state around, and as weak as the office of governor is, it’s the one office with a bully enough pulpit to make a difference. No matter how perfect my House member may be, he’s just one vote out of 170, and can’t make news (and thereby influence policy) with a mere word.

And I feel good about it. After all the slime we’ve been dragged through over on the Republican side, from talk about who’s bedding whom to “Vultures” to … well, I just don’t even want to think about it. After all that, to vote positively, without reservation, was a great relief.

If I were endorsing, I’d endorse Vincent Sheheen

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Ignore what I wrote in that last post. It does Vincent Sheheen a great disservice, by suggesting the reason to pick a Democratic ballot and vote for him tomorrow is simply because of the mere absence of negativity in his campaign.

He deserves a much more positive endorsement than that, for the simple reason that he is far and away the best candidate running for governor in 2010, a year in which we badly need new and visionary leadership in the governor’s office.

Of course, I put myself in a bind a couple of months back, when I sorta kinda decided not to endorse candidates as a blogger. I had all sorts of good reasons not to: No one was paying me to take all that aggravation. No longer representing the voice of the state’s largest newspaper (at least, that’s what it was when I was there), I had no institutional obligation to do it. And while doing it for the newspaper was business, if I did it on my own blog it would be personal, with all the many levels of messiness that entails. Then there was the unstated reason: For the first time ever, I found myself in a situation in which there would be a personal cost of sticking my neck out. A year’s unemployment had shown me how reluctant employers can be to take on someone with as much well-documented baggage as I have (much of it from having taking a stand FOR this powerful person, and AGAINST that one). And I was about to start trying to sell advertising, with the only thing I had to sell being my own brand and how it was perceived — and there is no surer, more infallible way to infuriate close to 50 percent of the public than to choose one candidate over another. Did I not owe it to my family to try to launch this enterprise on a sound footing, and not undermine it by making arrogant (at least, that’s how a lot of people perceive endorsements) pronouncements that would inevitably alienate? After all, I could be honest about what I think about candidates without taking that formal, irrevocable step.

Lots of good, solid, self-interested reasons not to endorse, right?

Well… sometimes one must stand up and be counted, even when one is not being paid to do so. Remember how, when Grace Kelly demanded to know why Gary Cooper had to make a suicidal stand against Frank Miller and his thugs when he wasn’t the marshal any more, he explained “I’ve got to, that’s the whole thing.“? Full of nuance, that Gary Cooper. Anyway, this is an “I just gotta” moment for me, minus the gunplay (we hope).  There are things more important than my own self-interest, or the good of the blog. One of them is South Carolina’s crying need for new leadership at this point in its history.

Ours is still a poor state. On all sorts of measurements of economic and social and physical well-being, from income to health, we continue to be last where we want to be first, and first where we want to be last. We continue to have a political culture, and institutional structure, that reinforces that dynamic, and resists change more steadfastly than the government of any other state. Our government was designed by landed slaveholders to preserve the status quo, because that’s what benefited them. Those men are all gone, but the system of government designed to serve them still exists, and holds us back.

We are also held back by a lack of trust of each other, and a lack of faith in the idea that together, we can overcome the challenges that face us. This manifests itself in the phenomenon we see being played out so dramatically in the Republican primary this year, as the candidates — even candidates I would think would know better — compete to see who can be the most negative, the most rabidly anti-government. What does it mean to be anti-government, in this context? It means to deny faith in our ability to get together, people of different attitudes and philosophies, and work through our differences to build a better future to share.

The radical individualism that all of the Republican candidates embody this year — especially Nikki Haley, the front-runner — has been tried in South Carolina, over and over. Our current governor, Mark Sanford, is easily the most ideologically pure manifestation of that philosophy ever to hold that office.

It is painfully clear after eight years of Mark Sanford — whom I enthusiastically endorsed in 2002 — that such an “I, me, mine” approach to governance does not work. One cannot govern effectively when one holds governing in contempt. That should have been obvious then. It’s certainly obvious now.

Vincent Sheheen offers the positive alternative. Not the “big-government, liberal” alternative that the propagandists of the GOP will accuse him of offering (not because of anything he advocates, but because that is their reflexive, automatic reaction to everything), but a sensible, moderate South Carolina-friendly approach unencumbered by radical ideology of any kind. Before he began this campaign, he was pushing his own proposal for restructuring our government to make it effective and accountable for a change. It is a pragmatic approach that would actually have a chance of becoming law if a governor were behind it. Rather than throwing unacceptable ultimatums at the Legislature and reveling in lawmakers’ rejection, Vincent Sheheen would actually work with lawmakers of both parties (he has a proven ability to do so) to make his proposal a reality. Instead of a governor who can’t even work with his own party and doesn’t want to, imagine how wonderful it would be to have one who works amicably with both?

Now, many of these same things can also be said of Jim Rex. He, too, has a positive, teamwork approach. He’s worked across party lines in advancing his public school choice initiatives, and has formed alliances with some of the most conservative Republicans in trying to improve the way schools are funded in South Carolina. But, because it’s been his job, his policy experience in office has been limited to education. And while better education may be the thing South Carolina needs most, it’s not the only thing; Vincent Sheheen’s experience with public policy is broader, despite his youth.

And in this election, when we have such a need for new beginnings, his youth is an advantage.

That I would say that would surprise some people who have worked most closely with me. I was the grumpy eminence grise on the editorial board who would ask a young candidate, “How old ARE you, anyway?” with a tone that suggested they hadn’t lived enough to be ready for the office they were seeking.

But it’s time now for a generational change. And among the 39-year-old Sheheen’s strengths is the fact that he offers us that.

An old friend, sensing I was leaning that way — because I’ve been honest about what I think of candidates, however much I’ve resisted a formal endorsement — asked me several weeks ago why I would choose Vincent over Jim. I answered as follows, after protesting that I was not, repeat, NOT going to endorse:

Now between you and me, I’d go with Vincent. So you inferred correctly.

Several reasons:
1. You know that with me, it’s seldom about the sum of policy positions. I would be hard-pressed to tell you [off the top of my head] what their policy positions are, beyond the fact that nothing has jumped out at me as bad. Rex has a plan for spending cigarette tax money that I’m not sure about, and I know Vincent’s all about restructuring, to cite a couple of differences that jump to mind. And the restructuring is a biggie.
2. So that leaves us with character, and I think the character of both is fine. But I’ve seen Vincent grow during this campaign in terms of his ability to connect with voters, while Rex is still that trustworty elder statesman who I’d be OK with as governor, but who isn’t likely to inspire. Vincent generates a newness, a sense of a new generation taking over from all the nonsense of the past, that is appealing. And he wears it well; he has his head on straight.
3. Vincent could work with the Legislature. He’s one of them, and that helps make up for being a Democrat. He would come in with lawmakers knowing that about him. He could make a difference. Rex is the guy that they’re accustomed to thinking of as “that ONE statewide Democrat,” and they just won’t be as likely to want to engage with him.
4. Vincent could win in November. Normally I wouldn’t mention that, but this year it’s important. The Republicans are all running so hard to the right, trying so hard to convince us that, in varying ways, they will be Mark Sanfords — even Henry, who should know better — that this year I just don’t see anything good coming out of any of them becoming governor. We so desperately need a break from what we have. And that makes it vitally important that the Democratic nominee not only be someone who’d be an improvement over what we have, but who could WIN in the face of the odds, which are always against the Democrat.

Let me stress again the generational factor. South Carolina needs a fresh start, a real break with its recent past. Vincent embodies that the best. This is a decision I’ve come to gradually, in my own holistic, intuitive way, but I’ve tried to spell it out as systematically as I can for you.

To elaborate on that: Rex radiates the aura of a civic-minded retired guy who’s willing to “give back” if there’s no one else to do the job. Vincent wants to build a better South Carolina, the one that he and his young children will live in. Makes a difference.

It occurs to me that I do my readers a disservice by sharing those thoughts privately with one friend, but not openly with them. So there it is. It may seem to be high on intangibles and low on specifics, but that’s because I had already reached the conclusions that on the specifics, I’ve concluded that Vincent is sound. That makes the intangibles — the ability to inspire, the ability to be positive rather than negative — of great importance. We didn’t worry about the intangibles (such as his aloof manner, his sleep-on-the-futon quirkiness, his hermitlike aversion to the company of other Republicans) with Mark Sanford, and look where it got us.

As I’ve explained before, none of the Republicans is offering us anything positive for our future. That puts me in the unaccustomed position of not having a preferred candidate on that side. But there is no doubt that there is a Democrat who stands well above them all, as well as being a stronger candidate than any in his own party.

That candidate is Vincent Sheheen.

At least, that would be what I’d say if I were endorsing.

My dilemma next Tuesday

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First, I’ll go ahead and complain the way I always do, and as always, no one will sympathize with me, but here goes: I think it’s wrong that I have to choose one or the other to vote in next Tuesday — the Democratic or Republican primary.

Go ahead, laugh. Everyone does. Why, don’t I understand how the world works? Yes, I do, and the way the world works is fouled up. Yep, I know there are all sorts of reasons why people aren’t allowed to vote in both. But they are all bad reasons. All of them involve placing the needs and interests of parties ahead of the legitimate rights and interests of voters. There is NO WAY you can defend a system that requires me to be disenfranchised, if I live in Richland County Council District 1 for instance, by either not getting a voice in who my solicitor is (only Democrats are running) or who my county councilman will be (the choices are both Republican).

OK, got that out of my system…

Now, I have to decide which ballot to ask for Tuesday, and this is the toughest choice I’ve faced in some time.

As I wrote earlier today, I think it’s imperative that we get the right governor going forward, and I’ve reached the conclusion that none of the Republicans is going to be the right governor. Since I consider the selection of our next governor to be far and away the most important decision that South Carolinians will make this year, that argues for asking for a Democratic ballot — which would be kind of an unusual move for me. Living as I do in Lexington County, about the only way I get a choice in elections is to vote in the Republican primary, so I generally do. But this time, the only way I get to vote POSITIVELY for someone I actually want to be my governor (as opposed to voting against the worst of two or more evils), is to take a Democratic ballot.

But look at what I give up if I do that:

  • The chance to vote against Jim DeMint. He’s going to be re-elected anyway, but I’d like it to be over my protest. Yeah, I’ll get to protest in November, but it would be more satisfying to do so twice.
  • The chance to vote against Joe Wilson, who embarrassed us all — not with his “You Lie” outburst (anyone can momentarily lose control) but with his decision to capitalize on it. His GOP opponent, Phil Black, is a nice guy. I enjoyed meeting him last time around. But he doesn’t have a prayer.
  • If I vote Democratic, I get no choice on lieutenant governor; it’s Ashley Cooper (the guy with the ultimate SC name) or nothing. But if you care who your lieutenant governor is (debatable) and you acknowledge that it will probably be a Republican, you certainly ought to state a preference among the five candidates running. And yes, there IS a difference between, say, Ken Ard and Eleanor Kitzman.
  • You get no say in who your Treasurer is. And again, I think it makes a difference. Converse Chellis seems to have done a decent job, from what I’ve heard. And this Curtis Loftis is running one of those anti-everything Tea Party style campaigns that I find so off-putting.
  • For attorney general, Democrats get no choice. Republicans have three to choose between, and again, one is likely to win.
  • In my SC House District, there are five candidates seeking the Republican nomination — and unlike with the GOP gubernatorial field, this is not a contest among extremists. We actually have several guys competing to see who can sound the most reasonable, and I think at least one of them should be rewarded for that. But I have to take a Republican ballot to have a say.
  • Voicing my preference for county council. There are two Republicans running in my district, and no Democrat.

Whereas, if I do take a Democratic ballot, I get to vote for governor, and between Vic Rawl and someone named Alvin Greene for US Senate, and… that’s it.

Add to that the fact that there is MUCH greater potential for critical runoffs in the Republican primary, with all those candidates — and if you vote Democratic the first time around, you are barred by law from having a say in those runoffs.

Not that I’ve made up my mind yet, but I have a feeling that Democratic turnout isn’t going to be at 2008 presidential levels. Don’t you think?

Any club that would have ME as a member…

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Today, I find myself in a bit of an ethical dilemma. And as y’all know, I am Mr. Ethics, although I do have a certain penchant for placing myself in … ambiguous… circumstances.

Y’all also know that I’m a member of The Capital City Club, of quite a few years’ standing. I’m quite proud of the club and its heritage, since it was founded to provide an inclusive alternative for certain other clubs that somehow hadn’t gotten around to admitting any black or Jewish or female members. Not only am I a member, but I serve on the club’s board.

In that capacity I know that, with the economic downturn, we can use all the special events we can get. At the wonderfully low price of the club’s “Breakfast Club,” my eating grits and bacon there every morning isn’t exactly paying the light bill. With that in mind we held my great-aunt’s 100th birthday lunch there recently, and a lovely time was had by all. And if your family has a wedding coming up and you need a reception venue, let me know and I’ll see what I can arrange…

So it is with a mixture of grateful welcome and wry amusement that I look upon this item, which a colleague shared with me with the observation, “Interesting choice of location for our little populist …” Here’s what the press advisory said:

(Columbia, SC) – Today, the Haley for Governor Campaign released information regarding location for the campaign’s primary night celebration.

What: Haley for Governor Primary Night Celebration

Where: Capital City Club, 1201 Main Street, Columbia, S.C.

When: Tuesday, June 8th

Event begins at 7:00 pm.  Media will have access beginning at 5:30 pm….

###

Personally, I think it’s absolutely fine that Nikki chose our club for her event. I may swing by to welcome her and her entourage. I’m sure they’ll find it an enjoyable experience, especially if the election returns break as I think they will, with her at least in a runoff.

And I doubt her populist fans will object. I don’t think they’re that kind of populist.

A Memorial Day truce, and other reflections

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As I was firing up the grill about midday, between rainstorms, I glanced at Twitter and was pleased to find this:

RT @AntonJGunn: Remembering my brother Cherone Gunn and his ship mates this Memorial Day.http://twitpic.com/1srfpw

For those of you not yet addicted to Twitter, what’s going on there is that Joe Wilson was reTweeting — that is, sharing with all of his 14,000 followers, Anton Gunn’s sharing of his memory of his brother, Cherone L. Gunn, who was one of the sailors killed on the USS Cole when it was attacked by al Qaeda the year before the 9/11 attacks.

Yes, that was Joe “You Lie” Wilson honoring the brother of the same Anton Gunn whom GOP candidate Sheri Few attacks as a dangerous socialist.

So it is that we set aside our pettier conflicts in the memory of something higher and better.

We all marked the day in our own ways. Burl went by Punchbowl to honor his parents and Ernie Pyle. For my part, I cooked out burgers and hot dogs for as many members of my family as could make it (only three of my kids, but all four granddaughters). Then I made another run with the truck to help one of my daughters get moved out of an apartment. Then I took a nap.

When I woke up, just a little while ago, I watched the end of Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers.”

It ended a little differently from the book, which I just finished reading last week. It ended with the scene of young “Doc” Bradley and some of the other boys splashing in the surf at Iwo Jima. After they had raised the flag over Mt. Suribachi, in a brief interlude in the fighting, some officer had the quirky idea of letting the guys go for a swim. There were weeks of nightmarish fighting against an unseen enemy yet to come, and three of the six flagraisers would be killed before it was over.

The point the narrator was making as we watched them was that they would probably rather be remembered that way, rather than as heroes. Yes, they were heroes, although not for raising a flag. They were heroes for all the other things they did on Iwo Jima, before and after that. Doc Bradley won the Navy Cross for exposing himself to withering enemy fire to treat a wounded Marine (he was a Navy corpsman). He never told his family about the medal; they learned about it after he died in 1994. He didn’t want to be known for that. He just wanted to live his life, build a business and raise his family.

The narrator closes with some words about how they didn’t perform their acts of heroism for flags, or their country, or for abstractions. They did it for each other. Which is what researchers who have studied the way men act in combat have discovered over and over. It’s all about the guy next to you. It’s about your buddies. Nothing profound about that, except that most people who’ve never been in combat probably don’t know it. The implication in this case is that once you’re separated from those buddies, by death or distance, the “heroism” doesn’t mean so much. And it’s just plain bizarre to be celebrated as heroes in the midst of the hoopla of the 7th Bond Drive, the way Bradley and Rene Gagnon and Ira Hayes were. Ira never could handle it, and ended up drinking himself to death. Rene never could get over the fact that his fame didn’t lead to fortune, and was disappointed. Only Doc Bradley seemed to get it together and live a normal, full, satisfying life after the war. Even though he would whimper and cry in the night, and never tell his wife why.

When forced to speak before crowds in the years after the battle, Bradley and the others would tell the people that they weren’t the heroes; the heroes were the ones who didn’t make it. Guys like Mike Strank — or, to go beyond the six, the most famous hero to die on that cinder: John Basilone, who had received the Medal of Honor for his actions on Guadalcanal and never had to fight again, but insisted on going back, and died on the first day of the battle for Iwo (earning the Navy Cross in the process). But that’s the conventional notion of a hero, and not necessarily what they meant.

Talk about messages… The instant I turned off the DVD player from watching “Flags of Our Fathers,” the TV switched to Henry’s “Vultures” ad, just to remind us of the nonsense facing us in the coming week.

What a bringdown, from heroism and the finest selflessness our nation is capable of, to that, which is if anything an appeal to the opposite…

Punchbowl National Cemetery in Punchbowl crater on Oahu.

These are real people we’re talking about

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This morning, as I was headed to the office after breakfast, a guy on the elevator recognized me and introduced himself. It was a cousin of Will Folks.

Like Will’s Dad, whom I’ve also met, this cousin (whom I’m not going to name because I didn’t think to ask him if he’d mind, and it’s certainly not his fault that his cousin’s in the news) seems to be, and almost certainly is, a nice, reasonable guy who just lives his life and means no one any harm.

And chatting with him I was reminded again of how totally innocent people get splashed by these scandals that they have nothing to do with. Not that this guy complained about his cousin; he did not. But he spoke of how the family was having to make a special effort to keep their 97-year-old grandmother from seeing the news this week. And I sympathized.

I see this all the time, and to some extent, it keeps me grounded. When other people are gleefully chortling over the latest scandal, and presuming to assign the worst motives and actions to everyone involved and dismissing them as though they were abstractions — fictional characters invented for their entertainment or the furtherance of their cause — I remain conscious of the fact that they are real people. And they have connections to other real people who feel the heat from the spotlight.

We’ve all been guilty of such objectification of people in the news. For someone who’s spent a lifetime doing this, dark humor is a sort of defense mechanism against feeling too strongly the human tragedies that we deal in. But something has happened in recent years, with the ubiquity of sources of information, and with the removal of the last vestiges of respect for people’s personal lives: I’ve seen the average consumer of news, particularly the denizens of the blogosphere, become FAR more cynical than most news people.

One reason for that is that journalists actually know the newsmakers. Or writers do, anyway. I’ve noticed since early in my career that the biggest cynics in newsrooms are the editors who are tied to their desks. They see the people whose names appear in headlines as abstractions, as characters in stories, and nothing more. Reporters are more likely to have a complete, flesh-and-blood knowledge of those same people, and to care more about how what they write affects those people. This is at the root of the alienation between reporters and headline writers, for instance. Headline writers can get lazy and exaggerate; reporters have to deal with the fury of those who are mischaracterized.

Anyway, it’s considerations like this that make me absolutely hate stories such as this Haley/Folks mess, and wish I didn’t have to read or think about it (but since it bears on who will be our next governor, I can’t ignore it). I know Nikki. Yeah, I’ve been appalled at the change I’ve seen in her as she has been seduced by demagoguery. But I still hate to see her and her family in this fix. As for Will — well, he’s a somewhat less sympathetic character, no matter who’s telling the truth, and that’s because Will is one of those bloggers who show the most contempt for the human beings he writes about (like the ones I complain about so much). But Will is still a person, and there are other people who are certainly innocent in all this who are effected.

And while I don’t always succeed, I try to keep that in mind.

Burl: The Early Days

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Got a hoot out of the picture our regular contributor Burl Burlingame posted on his blog out in Hawaii.

This was when he was in the 6th grade in Camden, NJ in 1964. That’s him in uniform in the middle of the back row.

Which means he was there shortly after (OK, four years after) I lived right down the road in Woodbury, where I attended the 2nd grade.

But by the time this picture was taken, I was living in Ecuador. So we didn’t actually meet until 1971.

There are, by the way, pictures like this of me. But don’t expect me to trot them out…

My dog and the Garden of Eden

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Back on yesterday’s Virtual Front Page I made a passing reference to God the Creator. That inspired Phillip to respond:

The line in Genesis about God creating man in “His image and likeness” has troubled me since the day I first read it, as that idea seems to me to be a self-serving construct of man himself, which has in turn served to justify just about everything man has ever done, for ill as well as good.

To the extent that I believe in some kind of unknowable First Cause, I’d have to say that insofar as He-She-It created man in His image, He also created single-celled amoebae in His image, or igneous rocks, or airless space, or kangaroos, etc.

The whole Genesis thing implies that man is somehow the culmination of God’s creation, the highest plateau, which just seems dubious considering A) the blink of an eye which comprises the whole duration of man’s existence compared to the earth’s history, and B) the significant mathematical probability that highly intelligent and evolved life exists on other planets in the universe.

To which I respond…

Phillip, Genesis is evocative literature, albeit inspired. The “image and likeness” part is poetic language for the fact that we are creatures capable of contemplating good and evil, and choosing between them. Other creatures can’t, as much as we’d like to assign such moral values to them.

I had a reminder of that this morning. I got up to find that my dog — during the part of the night BEFORE he woke me up whining to go out — had gotten into the garbage and chewed and torn and spread it all over the kitchen and another room, in SPITE of the fact that I had put it in the cabinet under the sink and secured it with a big rubber band, specifically to keep him out of it.

He must have spent most of the night on it. I’m still not sure how he did it without opposable thumbs. I should have taken a crime scene photo to post here, but I wasn’t thinking straight.

As I was fuming and ranting cleaning it up, I was thinking (and saying aloud, though I was alone) how horrible and wicked, how thoroughly evil,  it had been for him to do this so deliberately. so painstakingly. Which was, of course, idiotic on my part.

I had put in the garbage a paper towel with which I had wiped a plate full of juices from a steak dinner. The smell must have driven him half mad.

And he’s just a dog. He’s just like all the other creatures in the Garden. But if a grown human who had been thoroughly warned about this — say, Eve, or that slacker Adam — did the same, I’d be rushing to get my flaming sword…

The prime suspect in this morning's thoroughly nasty crime. So far, there are no indications of an al Qaeda or Taliban connection, but this is early in the investigation.

Talk about a fresh face — listen to THIS candidate

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Right after the Palin/Haley event Friday, I rushed home because my youngest granddaughter was spending the night at our house. So, with Jim Clyburn droning on on the TV in the background, I tuned him out and forgot Nikki Haley as well.

I thought what this little candidate had to say was far more profound and engaging.

(By the way, all that slamming and banging you hear also in the background is my wife fixing dinner. I’d have helped her, but I was busy, you know, babysitting. In the middle of this clip, my wife comes over to help me by tickling the baby’s tummy with the stuffed toy and otherwise joining me in showing how silly grandparents can get when interacting with a baby.)

How rhetoric gets extreme: a case study

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Last night after I posted the thing about Sarah Palin and Nikki Haley, I did what I usually do, which is post the headline and link on Twitter. But as I also usually do, I said a little more in the headline than I do here, as a way of drawing readers in and letting them know more about what the post is about. So instead of just “Sarah Palin coming to SC to back Nikki Haley,” I Tweeted:

Sarah Palin coming to back Nikki Haley — as if we really needed to start IMPORTING crazy here in SC… https://fpp.3be.myftpupload.com/?p=5456

Then, an interesting thing happened. Frequently I see my Tweets retweeted by others, and sometimes by a couple of people. This time, five different people (they were PaigeCoop, blogitch, tylermjones, JaneFredArch and sccounsel) retweeted that little come-on.

This sort of viral response, quite naturally, causes the more reptilian parts of my brain to go, “How can I get this kind of response again?” Because that many reTweets means that many more people I would not ordinarily reach are attracted to the blog, which means I get to report even bigger numbers (last month, 132,000 page views) next time I try to sell an ad — not to mention, of course, gaining a richer and more diverse conversation here on the blog, of course, which is what we’re all about here, of course. Ahem.

So it is is that I was rewarded for saying “as if we really needed to start importing crazy here in SC.” Which means my natural response is to describe MORE posts in similar terms, so as to get this same reward.

But the thing is, I wasn’t totally happy with that wording. Basically, I wanted to say that we have enough problems here in SC without bringing in a person who is a flashpoint for all sorts of conflicting emotions out in the national political buzz machine. And we have enough of our own demons here in our beloved state. There’s also the problem that we have every bit of our share of the anti-intellectualism that runs through American politics, a strain of which Mrs. Palin has rightly or wrongly become the symbol. We’ve got enough of it not to need to import the latest, flashiest, most Reality TV-esque version of it. Anyway, I’m not at all sure that “crazy” captured all that, although all that and more was what I was seeking to suggest.

But it certainly grabbed people. I was instantly rewarded for it. Which is maybe not a good thing. I have a certain knack for lurid language, which I generally try to keep in check, but not always successfully. People could often tell when I wrote an editorial at the paper (which I didn’t do all that often in recent years) because of that knack. Here is a sample of it, according to people who point these things out to me.

I really don’t need encouraging on this score.

And it occurs to me that this is the dynamic that has produced the particularly nasty morass of political rhetoric in which people think they are being hip and relevant and pithy when they call people “wingnuts” or otherwise engage in insult and calumny in the course of expressing themselves politically.

All those other blogs out there that serve hyperpartisan causes, that draw and feed anger, that thrive on treating those with whom their readers disagree with contempt bordering on dehumanization… the blogs to which I have always wanted this one to be a civil alternative … probably started down the road that they’re on by getting rewarded for getting a little punchier and a little more extreme with each post. Stimulus and response.

So… how do I grow the blog and resist that trap? Perpetual vigilance, I suppose — on my part and yours.

I was leaning toward The New Normal, but it’s becoming too popular

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They’re wearing out my name before I’ve even adopted it.

I was leaning strongly toward “The New Normal” as the name for my band — you know, the band I’m going to start once I get the name and the playlist all worked out, after which I’ll start recruiting bandmates — but it seems like everybody’s using it every time I turn around, such as here and here and here. If only I had copyrighted it earlier — I would have licensed it to be used only by the band itself, and other people who have paid for the right by, for instance, losing their jobs in this Great Recession. Yeah, I know we have this free speech thing in this country, but I think there should be a rule that you don’t get to say “The New Normal” unless you’ve lost your job.

But I didn’t act quickly enough, mainly because of my great indecision when it comes to picking a name. I could probably decide to go to war, were I a president or a king, a LOT more quickly than the almost four decades I’ve been pondering band names.

Over the years, I’ve considered:

  • The Cotton Pigue Mentality — This was inspired by a certain county official in rural West Tennessee back in the late 70s or early 80s. Trouble is, this would have to be a bluegrass or progressive country band, which would eliminate a lot of my playlist. Also, I would have to have my friend Richard Crowson, the best picker of banjo, mandolin and guitar I know, and he lives plumb halfway across the country, in Kansas. Richard was there when we came up with the band name, so he shares the rights.
  • Citizen Arcane — This was a sobriquet given me by the late Delores Ballard, my dear friend back at The Jackson Sun in the early days of my career. I got that handle because I knew a lot about really obscure, unimportant stuff, and I suppose I was kind of overbearing about it. Delores was generous with nicknames. She also called me “Wa-Wa,” which has possibilities for a band, and “Percival Pedant,” for my insistence as an editor on precision. That last was just way too uncool to make the list.
  • Prussian Blue — It’s a color. In fact, it was one of the first synthetic pigments, whatever that means. I think I ran across it in a dictionary once. I liked the tension between a word with harsh, militaristic overtones (picture a Prussian army officer with a Heidelberg scar) and the dreamy “blue.” Unfortunately, the name was taken by a white nationalist pop duo. I am not making this up.
  • Wireless Cloud — The dream that apparently will never be realized here in South Carolina, since all of our legislative sessions are all about Mark Sanford, rather than legislation.
  • The Irreconcilables — This was a band idea I had very briefly, but dropped like a hot potato after I’d thought about it for 30 seconds. It would have included such politically irreconcilable local musicians as James Smith and Will Folks. I decided that normal bands have enough trouble with artistic differences; why buy extra trouble?
  • The Romeo Clause — this was from a loophole in SC law on the age of consent, which essentially held that you couldn’t be charged for having sex with a minor if you too were a minor. You know, like Romeo and Juliet. Very South Carolina. Disgusting, but I liked the name.
  • Splash Blend — If you recall, there was a brouhaha between Big Oil and the jobbers over whether gasohol had to be blended by the oil companies at the refinery, or whether they could be “splash blended” in the wholesalers’ trucks. Sounded like a band name to me.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten some of the names. Maybe y’all have some better ideas.

Ya want food pictures? Here ya go…

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food1

OK, I can do food pictures, if you want them.

Actually, truth be told, I frequently take pictures of my food in restaurants when I’m alone and the light hits things in an interesting way. Not that they’re nice enough for commercial work, but it passes the time. And not just food — interesting architecture, a plaque I didn’t want to bother copying, the lady at the next table talking about her colonoscopy, the person of indeterminate gender in the mullet. I just don’t often post them here.

Maybe I should.

Anyway, above you see my first helping yesterday.

And below, you see something that gives the lie to what I said a day or two back. Remember I said I had baked myself a special cake because I wouldn’t be able to have any of the other desserts? Well, I was wrong. Here’s my dessert plate, with a piece of my cake, a slice each of the special banana and pumpkin breads my sister-in-law made specially for me, and the apple-cranberry crunch we always have, with a dollop of Tofutti.

I couldn’t finish it. All my life, I’ve seen people do dessert plates like that. I don’t see how they handle that much sugar.

But I must say thanks again to my sister-in-law. The breads were delicious. Especially the pumpkin.

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Julie & Julia & me

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Tonight, after we had done all the cooking we could do the night before, my wife and I went to see a movie. Actually, to be more accurate, my wife had done all the cooking at our house, except for a special-recipe cake I made for myself (no wheat, no dairy, no eggs), since I can’t eat the other desserts we’ll be having.

We went to the dollar-movie house to see “Julie & Julia.” Actually, it used to be the dollar-movie house. Now it’s $2.

Anyway, we went to see the movie, and it was cute and all that, but a bit frustrating for a blogger such as myself.

It’s about a woman who does a blog with a gimmick — she’s going to cook all the recipes in Julia Child’s famous book in a year — and the blog becomes wildly popular, and she gets a book deal, and it’s made into, you guessed it, a movie.

And the thing is, that’s not going to happen to me, which made me a little sad. I don’t have a gimmick. And I don’t have an obsession that thousands of people will resonate to — at least, I’m not aware of one. I’m not even particularly interested in such things. I know the kinds of things that are engaging and commercial, and I’m not that into them.

The obsession that the blog of the woman in the movie was about was food. This is a very chick thing. Excuse me, ladies, but women get excited about food as though it were sex or something. Some men do, too, but I am definitely not one of those men. My diet is limited by my allergies, of course, and that’s part of it, but I’m just not a foodie at heart anyway. I will fully enjoy my Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, but then I’ll take a nap and not think about it any more. I’ve tried waxing enthusiastic about Dixie Lee field peas and candy pumpkins, but I definitely could not imagine blogging exclusively about such a limited subject. (Foodies don’t think food is a limited subject, but there it is…)

Women are always starting wildly successful blogs, read by other women, about food and shopping and their kids and such, but I’m just not that kind of blogger. For that matter, I’m not into the kinds of things guys usually obsess about, either. Sports, for instance. Sports has the potential for a guy to be the kind of blog money-maker that food and shopping are for women. But I’m not, by American standards, into sports.

So what do I have? Well, I’m really, really into those Aubrey-Maturin novels, and I think it would really be cool to spend a year sailing the world in a square-rigged ship, living on dried peas and salt pork, attacking and sinking the king’s enemies, and blogging about it. But I don’t think it’s really feasible. The obstacles are pretty significant.

I’m really into my grandchildren. But cute pictures I take of them would probably wear thin with my readers.

Then, there’s the fact that I am an actual unemployed guy, the epitome of this economic situation. And the truth is, I have not really tapped into that subject. I don’t tell y’all most of what I’m thinking and experiencing because, well, it’s personal. If I went into perfectly frank detail about what this experience is like, it could be interesting. But it could also chase away every job prospect I have. And I can’t imagine it being commercial. Who pays for depressing? I sure wouldn’t. I mean, I’m living it, and I’ve frankly had enough of it.

So anyway — it would be great if I could come up with a gimmick that would make this blog pay off in a big way. Suggestions, anyone?

For John Monk: Some pictures from home

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kensington1

Little-known tidbit of newspaper personality trivia: John Monk of The State grew up in Kensington, Md., two blocks over from the house in which my Dad grew up. This was not at the same time, mind you. John’s older than I am, but not THAT much older. No, John remembers when my Aunt Bobbie’s family lived in what originally had been built as the Warthen house. He particularly remembers that my cousin Jackie drove a Ford Falcon as a high school student.

I had known John for years and years, but didn’t learn this stuff about him until after I hired him away from The Charlotte Observer in 1997.

Anyway, it all came up again when I went up there for Aunt Bobbie’s 90th birthday party. Jackie was there, but no Ford Falcon. The celebration wasn’t in Kensington, but further out in the far-flung suburbanopolis of Montgomery County. But before the party, Dad and I explored around Kensington a bit. I mentioned all this in a previous post.

While I was there, I called John to tell him I was on his street, but I was wrong. I thought he lived on Everett, but it was actually another block over on Franklin. I ran into John at Rotary yesterday, and promised to share with him some pictures from the visit. And I decided the easiest way to do that would be to post them here. This is bound to bore most of you, but you can just move on to another post. Maybe I’ll do something personal for you later.

To identify the pictures:

  1. Above you find my Dad checking out the old homestead at 3904 Dresden St. Remember it now, John? Second house over from Connecticut Ave. A fact or two about that house: It was built by my great-grandfather, Alfred Crittenton Warthen, as a wedding present to my grandfather, just under a century ago. It stayed in the family until the present owner bought it from Aunt Bobbie’s daughter, my cousin Mary Jane. A.C. Warthen, by the way, may have built your home, too, if it’s old enough. He built a lot of the homes in that area. I wish he had kept some in the family. I’d love to be sitting on some of that real estate today.
  2. Mizell Lumber & Hardware. My Dad remembered it from his day — he went to school with some Mizell’s. Thought you might remember it, too.
  3. The “modern” (circa 50s or 60s, I’m guessing) shopping center that was a block from the elementary school that I attended for a couple of months back before we were sent down to South America in 1962 (My Dad was doing language training in D.C.). I used to collect discarded pop bottles and exchange them at the grocery that used to be here, so I could spend the proceeds on soda and Mad magazines.
  4. The old train station. They were having a local farmer’s market in the parking lot that Saturday.
  5. The house my grandmother lived in as a teenager. She had previously lived downtown next door to Pitchfork Ben Tillman, when he was a U.S. senator. I mentioned that in a previous column. Anyway, her father — an attorney from South Carolina working for the Treasury Department, who would later help start the GAO — eventually moved the family out here, away from the taint of Tillman. Here’s how she met my grandfather — she would see him walking past her house on the way to the train station each day in a suit and straw boater, carrying a bag. She thought he was a salesman, and the bag contained his wares. Actually, he was a ballplayer, and bag contained his uniform and glove. He worked for the Post Office, but he only worked there so that he could play ball for its team. He was a pitcher. Gerald “Whitey” Warthen would eventually be offered a contract with the Senators, which he turned down to work in his father’s business.
  6. OK, this isn’t even Kensington, but I liked the shot, from later in the same day as the ones above. That’s the security gate at Bethesda Naval Hospital close by. I shot this through the windshield just before pulling up to the gate, as the Jeep ahead pulled away.

Finally, John, here are the pictures I posted earlier from Dietle’s, where you told me you had a beer or two back in the day…

Out of pocket

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Wrote this last night, but saved it in draft form, as I was too spacey to know whether I was making any sense:

Here’s why I haven’t posted today, and probably won’t tomorrow…

Things have been crazy at our house later because we’ve been trying to get our house ready to go on the market (anybody want to buy a house, by the way?). In the midst of all that, my wife — who’s been working on this project pretty much around the clock (around her job), with me trailing along in her wake being occasionally helpful — got some kind of horrible stomach bug last week. Not the flu, but it might as well have been. Wiped her out for most of a week, but she kept going.

Over the weekend, one of the twins got a mild case of it, but quickly recovered. Then yesterday, the other twin got it, and so did her mother, my daughter. My wife went over to try to help with all that last night, leaving me alone to work on a list of things to get ready for the fact that today, a Realtor was planning to show our house.

So I put some stuff on the stove to cook for my dinner, and went upstairs to do some of the things on my punch list. Then, I drifted over to the laptop and started a long response to some of y’all’s comments, and then… the smoke alarm went off downstairs. I had totally lost track of time, and hadn’t heard the kitchen timer go off, and a pot of field peas had run out of water.

The house was immediately, before I could get downstairs and get the pot out into the yard, saturated with smoke. I spent the next three or four hours with the attic fan on and all the doors open, wiping down every surface in the kitchen and cleaning out the hood vent, trying to get rid of the smell. My wife, who had planned to spend the night at my daughter’s house to look after sick folk, came home to help me deal with the mess. I was feeling pretty sheepish by then, I can tell you.

Right after she got home — well after 10 — my son-in-law called to say my daughter had gotten so much sicker that he was going to take her to the hospital. (I won’t go into detail, but she really needed some fluids by IV, and other complications addressed.) He woke up their big sister to watch the twins until I could get there. He ended up spending the night at the hospital and so did my wife. The staff was badly overwhelmed, so the smart thing was for a healthy family member or two to be there.

I spent the night on the couch at the twins’ house. They were fine, although I didn’t sleep much. Then today, I took care of them all day except for a couple of hours in which I grabbed a late breakfast, did some last-minute work on the house, noted with satisfaction that most of the smoke smell was gone, and just to be on the safe side put a frozen apple pie in the oven to get a pleasant smell going (crafty, huh?). And yes, I turned off the oven when it was done.

Then I went back to take care of the twins until about an hour ago, then came home and put some dinner on the stove. It’s cooking now. And yes, this time, I have the laptop in the kitchen. My wife’s spending the night in the hospital with my daughter (who still isn’t in a regular room), my son-in-law is with the babies, and I’m going to cop some Zs at home before going back to take care of the babies in the morning.

It’s 11:12 p.m. My dinner is ready.

Don’t expect me to post tomorrow.

To the most important point: My daughter is better, just not better enough to go home. She was really, really sick.

Since I wrote the above, the night has passed without incident — except that my youngest daughter, the ballet dancer, injured her foot last night and it looks like she might not be able to perform Saturday, which we were looking forward to. Her big sister is still in the hospital, the twins are in the care of my son-in-law, and I’m going to try to get some freelance work done this afternoon. Still probably won’t post before tonight, if then…